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Experimental filmmaker and author Kenneth Anger died on May 11, 2023. In this article, AMASS contributor Patricia Cunliffe explores his life, his work, and his unique place in our culture. Then we hear from Anger himself in a revelatory and surprisingly intimate interview.

It is my opinion that to become well-acquainted with Kenneth Anger’s body of work would be a necessary indulgence for anyone who considers themselves deserving of life-enhancing influences. I might also recommend that the cumulative consumption take place over an adequate period in order to savor and digest each individual piece of work. Anger, perhaps best known for his printed volumes of Hollywood Babylon (I & II) and the cult-classic film “Scorpio Rising,” made his first film, “Ferdinand the Bull,” at the age of eight. When he was eleven, he reflected a child’s preoccupation over the feeling of impending war that permeated even the most clandestine adult conversation in “Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat?” which also incorporated a popular song by the same name. Although it’s the epitome of experimental filmmaking,  the Kenneth Anger: Magick Lantern Cycle film-to-video collection seems to be peculiarly obscure.

His films, obscure as they may be, have, ironically enough, made a tremendous impact on not only experimental but numerous mainstream filmmakers alike, not to make light of the fact that it was Anger himself who did invent the entity that we now know as the “music video.”

Anger has been grouped among the likes of John Cassavetes, Fredric Wiseman, John and Faith Hubley, and George Romero by Ray Frumkes, Films in Review Jan/Feb 1997 “Look Back with Anger.” Frumkes went on to label this group as “gifted, nontraditional visionaries without whose work the substance of American cinema would be a dull, near-consistent, currency green.”

Kenneth Anger is preceded by his reputation as a disciple of Aliester Crowley, and has therefore been dubbed with such titles as “Hollywood Satan.” In contrast, this artist is also responsible for having created some of the most visually appealing imagery to be found. Films such as “Eaux d’Artifice,” “Rabbits Moon,” and the incomparably beautiful “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome” are but a few examples of his unparalleled mastery of composition and eye for beauty. Heralded as a genius, even by those who are not fond of his work, Kenneth Anger is a man with a wonderful sense of humor who laughs freely and frequently during a conversation. Who was it that said, “Only the insecure take themselves so seriously”? Oh yes, it was me.

Of course, what reason would Anger have not to be secure?

In 1947 at the age of seventeen, Anger made “Fireworks,” which he submitted to a film festival in Biarritz, France, called Festival du Film Maudit (Festival of Damned Film) in which it received the prize for Film Poetique (Poetic Film). His first French fan letter came from none other than Jean Cocteau himself, who happened to be the head of the jury committee. The letter from Cocteau was handwritten, and Anger has kept it to this day along with the treasured memories of the friendship they shared.

Kenneth Anger, an American, held the post of Assistant to the Director of the Cinematique Francais for twelve years, until the death of Cinematique Director Henri Langlois.

In October of 1967, Anger published his own full-page obituary in The Village Voice following the robbery of his “Lucifer Rising” footage, which had taken him a year to complete and was enough for a feature-length film. The dates on the obituary were the dates between “Fireworks” and the original “Lucifer Rising,” and signified for Anger his departure from the world of filmmaking. Fortunately, Anger was finally persuaded to continue and the remainder of the footage was later pieced together to become “Invocation of my Demon Brother,” a short film for which Mick Jagger composed the score.

In 1993, “Eaux d’Artifice” was selected by the Library of Congress as one of the two avant-garde films chosen for their preservation program. The other was Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon.”

Students at Universities from Princeton to UCLA study Anger’s films, and whether he is aware of it or not, he still has a following—a lot of whom were probably not even born at the time he shot his last movie on 16mm.

Like most filmmakers, Anger’s work is easily identified, but not because of the sameness with which we attribute some of the better-known director’s bodies of work. The common thread for Anger is the attention to exquisite detail, from a small costuming element to a breathtaking location to the perfect musical milieu. His images are the equivalent of a sonnet, or a masterpiece, or an opus. His intellect and imagination are endowed with a sort of magical power—a power warranted by having had so much influence on so many other filmmakers.

It is understandable, the amount of artistry that has found its inspiration in Anger’s films. Kenneth Anger has explored his own version of biker culture in which we witness the restoration of a custom motorcycle set to a string of pop songs in “Scorpio Rising.” “Puce Moment” features an array of beautiful costumes from the history of ‘Hollywood’ filmmaking. “Rabbit’s Moon” incorporates classic commedia dell’arte and ballet with an original contemporary rock song to illustrate a lunar dream. “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome” found it’s inspiration at a Halloween party in which everyone was encouraged to “come as their madness” and Anais Nin arrived wearing a silver birdcage on her head. “Lucifer Rising” has been described by Anger himself as “the birthday party of the Aquarian Age…ceremonies to make Lucifer rise.” He goes on to explain that “Lucifer is the Light god, not the devil. The Rebel Angel behind what’s happening in the world today.” Anger’s creativity knows no limits, and he instills in many of us the desire to do the same.

The films of Kenneth Anger boast an impressive cast of characters inherent in a variant subject matter, all of whom seem to reflect a personal connection to the intensity of his spirit. His films encompass a ritualistic essence, further enhanced by musical scores that range from Vivaldi to Bobby Beausoliel photographed in equally significant locations which also range from Tivoli, Italy to the Egyptian pyramids to Stonehenge in England and back to Hollywood. Anger’s films command your undivided attention and facilitate you to your own alternative consciousness.

According to Lee Harris’s Cult Movies and Video #8, 1993, “The Celluloid Cosmos of Kenneth Anger,” “Liberating influences have helped Anger to create a powerful alternate universe in his films—when you watch them, you leave the familiar and mundane behind.”

In addition to the following conversation, I also had the pleasure of observing him in a public situation, an opening reception for a new Hollywood museum where he was recognized and immediately interviewed by a German television crew. He handled himself in this impromptu situation in the graceful and dignified manner that appropriately suits a man of Kenneth Anger’s stature.

As with any legendary presence, there will be conflicting views. Focusing on discrepancies over his birth date or whether Anger is truly his given name rather than on the substance of his work does no more than prove to me the pettiness of an individual who has to dig so deep to find something uncomplimentary to say about him.

Kenneth Anger is a class act. He is a pillar of grace and generosity. It comforts me to know that traits such as humility, honesty, and humor are still alive, especially today when so few actually live up to half of who they think they are.

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What exactly was your original intent for your films?

I consider myself an artist and I wanted to express myself as an artist, using film. I was raised having had some contact with the industry. My grandmother was a costume mistress for silent films, and the stories she told me made me wish that I had been around to make movies then. There was more freedom for a pioneer of sorts.

When I was four years old, through my grandmother, who was a friend of Max Reinhart, I had a small role in the Warner Brothers production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was a fantasy production so it had a lot of elements like fairies on wires, which fascinated me as a kid. So that gave me a little taste of what it’s like to make films in the studio.

But I learned how to make my own films. That was basically it. I didn’t want to go into the industry, so I graduated into working with my parents’ 16mm home movie camera. They only used it for vacations or birthdays, the usual home movie subjects, and it was just sitting there the rest of the year when we weren’t on vacation. There was some film left over from one summer in Yosemite. I looked at the expiration date and the film would expire in a couple of months, so I asked if I could make something myself with this film. They said to go ahead. That’s how I began.

How old were you?

About eight.

How precocious.

Yes, I was, but I was also lucky that at least I had a camera available and a few rolls of film. The first film I made was at summer camp in Big Bear, I filmed a little silent drama based on “Ferdinand the Bull,” a child’s story by Munro. Munro’s story was actually made into a Disney cartoon a couple of years later.

The first film that I really feel was a work of art on my part was called “Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat.” It was in the summer of ’41, just before the war. There was a feeling of war, particularly among the children. We knew something was going to happen, but we didn’t know what. We were always expecting the Japanese submarines to appear in Santa Monica Bay or something, which is not too far from what happened when they did appear in Santa Barbara. So, I made the film “Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat” after the Mills Brothers’ song of the same name. It’s a song of disquietude. The lyrics are…

Who has been rocking my dreamboat

Who’s been disturbing my dream

I was sailing along, peaceful and calm

And suddenly something went wrong

It never says what went wrong, but it’s a wonderful mood piece. So I did a film of my classmates playing at war games in the streets of Santa Monica. Basically, I just organized them into what they were doing. One of the fellows had a father who worked in special effects and he had a smoke bomb from his father, so at one point the smoke bomb was thrown and they all very elaborately died as if it was the gas. That was my first little art film.

You were so young and you were already exploring political issues within your art.

I knew I wanted to make films as similar to someone else writing a poem. I knew that in France, they made things called cine-poems in the thirties, and that inspired me. I’d been able to see avant-garde films, like Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet. We had, in the Los Angeles area, several good art houses that specialized in the art-type films or foreign films before the days that films were being shown in museums. That was where I saw my first French films in their original versions with subtitles.

That’s what helped me learn French, which is my second language. I wrote the first version of Hollywood Babylon in French and it was published when I was living in Paris in 1959.

Did you ever think of being able to sell your films commercially?

No, but I did want them to be seen. So, by the time I made “Fireworks” when I was seventeen, they had been shown at the Coronet Theatre on La Cienega in Los Angeles in a midnight show. Then I was invited to show them in San Francisco at the Museum of Art. There I met other filmmakers like James Broughton, Frank Stauffacher, Sidney Peterson. I was glad to know that there were other filmmakers working on 16mm.

There was also a woman by the name of Maya Deren who was making films at the same time, but I didn’t meet her while she was here. In 1943, she made “Meshes in the Afternoon,” which is a very dreamlike, beautiful silent film, in the Hollywood Hills. She was lucky to have a very good cameraman as a husband, Alexander Hammid. Her images always had that polished look.

Did you shoot your films yourself?

Yes, I did everything myself, the photography, my own cutting. Occasionally I’d have a friend to push the camera along if I had it on wheels. I usually will get someone else to do the music, but basically it was a one-man operation all the way to the end.

They have that quality to them.

Sort of hand-made.

Did you run into a lot of obstacles just trying to get your films screened?

Well, early enough the word got around that I was making interesting films. Quite a few of my showings were at film clubs or universities and often they would invite me to come and present them. And they did pay me. So that helped spread the word, I guess.

How interesting, then, that they are still studying your films in universities.

Well, I think they have shelf life.

Did you have any idea at that time that generations later would still be studying the works of Kenneth Anger?

I made them as something that I’d hoped would last, at least as long as I would and hopefully longer. I put a lot into the films, and to me they are the equivalent of a painting.

Your films have been interpreted in many different ways, by as many different people. What kinds of statements were you trying to make?

There is no such thing as pure art. Art always reflects the time that it is made, and no matter how much of an ivory tower the artists may think that they are in they are still a child of their times. “Scorpio Rising,” for example, definitely reflects the period that it was made. At that time, there had been a Hollywood film on motorcycles, The Wild One, which had Marlon Brando playing a biker, wearing the classic leather jacket. I saw a whole other side, an anarchic side, to the bikers that I wanted to represent, so that’s how that film came about.

Were you a part of the biker scene at that time?

I had friends who were. I’ve never owned a motorcycle. That was a group in Brooklyn, where I was living for awhile, they were mostly Italian-American guys that made their money working at the Fulton-Welsh Fish Market at night. They made pretty outrageous money for that time, but it was hard work unloading the cargo from the ships to go to all the restaurants in Manhattan. I was at one point considering making a documentary film of them at work. I wish I had, now.

There is a lot of work that goes in to restoring a motorcycle piece by piece. It’s interesting that you thought to use that as part of your subject matter.

All of the bikes that were shown in “Scorpio Rising” were handmade by the guys that are in it. Each one had their own bike and they spent all their spare time and money working on it. Once or twice a year there would be a bike show in New York, usually at the Coliseum, where they would exhibit and some of them would get a prize. A lot of the bikes were not what you would call practical street bikes. I call them “dream machines.” They are more like a fantasy.

Is it true that the images of James Dean and the swastika were not a part of a contrived set but actually a part of the biker’s natural habitat?

One of the bikers had an older brother who was in WWII and had gone through the campaign right into Germany, and like hundreds of other soldiers just gathered up souvenirs. These things were just lying around at that time, so they would just stuff a Nazi flag in their duffel bag or whatever. So, this younger brother inherited these things. And he liked them without even giving them any particular political significance.

There are supposed to be two symbols of the twentieth century, which will survive and be recognized hundreds of years from now. One is the face of Mickey Mouse and the other is supposed to be the Nazi flag because it’s such a powerful design. It is revived from a Vedaic solar symbol, which is thousands of years old. It’s part of American Indian lore, too. But, the Nazi’s used it in a way that was a very powerful symbol.

It was a beautiful flag, not by association, but by what it was of itself, an exclusive design. A good design, in politics, amounts to something. Often, it can be for an evil purpose, but if you have a powerful design you’re halfway there. It’s like power of persuasion, and Adolf Hitler was into repetition. This was years before pop art or Andy Warhol doing a string of a dozen silk-screened images. But, Hitler understood that, the way he just saturated Germany with these images of his new regime which were just everywhere.

There has always been the exploitation of the female form. Did you meet with much criticism by courageously giving equal time to the male form?

That was just my own interest. The actors who appeared in “Scorpio Rising” were working class, Italian-American heterosexuals. In other words, there was no homosexuality there at all. But people think, the way I photographed it, that there’s more of that feeling than was actually there. But, I also saw something in them that I call a latent quality in that they would never admit to something, but it’s still there.

That was a bold thing to do at the time.

It was bold, but it was a time to be bold. In other words, I did it, but I did it before Andy Warhol or other people, even Jack Smith, were to use male nudity. I just did it as an artist. Rhat’s what I wanted to do, and so I did it. It was controversial because it was very outspoken.

How do you see your particular style of filmmaking in relationship to reality?

 I’m capturing reality by using almost deliberately restricted means so that I can have my freedom. For instance, I don’t use direct sound, I tell my narrative, and they do have narrative even though it is not an obvious narrative, using a kind of music background which is usually, as in the case of “Scorpio Rising,” of an ironic content.

What kind of a response were you expecting to get, or did you know that your films would go above the heads of the average public?

I was always expecting to find a hip audience, which I did. The same one which would appreciate or understand a William Burroughs novel, or Kerouak, so I never got close to what you could call an average audience.

Of all my films, “Scorpio Rising” was very widely shown because it received notoriety in California. The first showing in a Los Angeles theatre called the Cinema was busted by the vice squad.  It seems laughable now, because there’s so little in it that you could possibly finger in that way. But that case got it notoriety. It went to the California Supreme Court. Luckily, I had my champions and they found for me Stanley Fleischmann, a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union who represented me voluntarily. I didn’t have any money to pay him, but he thought it was an interesting case. It was cleared by the California Supreme Court as being of redeeming social merit. I got real good coverage on that case.

What were they trying to say about it? What could be wrong with it?

Well, there are some flashes, about three frames long, of nudity which are so brief you can hardly see them. It was never anything you could linger over. But in the first trial, the Hollywood vice squad made huge blowups of these frames, which are seen so briefly in the film, to put them in the faces of the jurors saying, “Do you want your children to see anything like this?” It was laughable, but it was at a time when these cases were important. On the East Coast, Jack Smith had a similar situation with his film Flaming Creatures. This was the mid-sixties, the film had stopped showing in New York, but eventually it was cleared. The same with my film—it was cleared and shown anywhere in America, finally.

At the time it was a hassle, but it was important. Somebody had to do it. In other words, we cleared the way for freedom of expression. I’ve been thinking since, somebody had to do it and I’m just as glad to be part of that history.

Were you conscious that that was what you were doing, or were you just making your film?

I wasn’t deliberately putting things in it which I thought would get me in trouble. I was just making a film reflecting this biker culture, as I knew it. It’s just interesting, in retrospect, the guardians of morality being so uptight at the time.

Do you come from a very politically aware—or even active—family?

 I’m the black sheep of the family, because my family is quite conservative Republican. I remember as a little boy they didn’t want me to put a picture up in my room of FDR. They thought he was a bad man, which of course is how Republicans felt about Roosevelt. They were always indignant about this “rich man” who was playing at being a socialist. But I always liked FDR.

Did you put it up anyway?

 I put it up inside my closet.

Were you an only child?

 No, I have an older brother and sister but there was quite a gap in the ages. I was eight years younger than my brother and they were already away at school when I was small, so I almost grew up as an only child. My grandmother had quite a bit to do with raising me. She was a costume mistress and she was also a painter, a member of Women Painters West. We used to drive down to Palm Springs around Easter in her big old Packard, because at that time there were these fabulous dunes covered with wildflowers and the desert verbena and she used to love to paint them. She was a good painter. I carried her paint box, I set up her easel and I was her companion while she painted.

Did your grandmother live long enough to see any of your finished works?

She bought the camera with which I made “Fireworks” when I was seventeen, a Bell & Howell that had served in World War II as a kind of newsreel camera. It was kind of beat-up, but they are a very sturdy camera. They only carry a 100 ft. roll of film, they have a variable speed and a wind-up motor that will only last maybe ten seconds, so you can’t have long takes. But I didn’t want long takes anyway, so it was quite suitable.

So she bought my camera for me and actually paid for the film, which was very inexpensive to make. But that was the extent of my family’s involvement. I remember my parents were not interested in my personal artwork. Certainly my father wasn’t.

Did they actually say that? “We’re not interested?”

 Basically, yes. I mean, my father was an engineer, my brother was an aeronautical engineer, and they expected me to follow the family tradition, in which case my way would have been paid through Cal-Tech. But I said, “I’m not a scientist and I don’t feel inclined in that direction. I can’t force myself to do it, and I won’t.” So that was the end of it.

When my father died, he left me nothing. Had I been more diplomatic and not been so Machiavellian maybe I could have bluffed him along to a certain extent, but I just didn’t feel like it at the time. At any rate, I got out without too much damage.

Your grandmother did manage to see “Fireworks” before she died?

I showed it to my grandmother after I made it, and she said, “It’s terrific.” This was a woman in her eighties. She was a very dear person in my life.

It’s important to have somebody like that behind you.

 I had one member in my family that was sympathetic. I was never close to the other members of my family, and I was glad to get away from them as soon as I could. A couple of years after my grandmother died I left for Europe and started a new life in Paris.

What a great place to start a new life.

 Particularly then. It was1950 and there were so many interesting people alive then. I had sent “Fireworks” to a film festival in Biarritz. I didn’t know that Cocteau was the head of the jury, but it turned out that he was and he gave it the prize for poetic film. For a seventeen-year-old, this was kind of amazing. He wrote me a letter, a one page letter, handwritten, that I still have. It was signed with his signature, a little star, which he always did. I decided then that I would have to go over there and meet him.

I just took off on my own, with very little money. Luckily, I got a job in Paris very quickly as assistant to the director of the French film museum, The Cinematique Francais, Henri Langlois. I was his assistant for twelve years. That was a wonderful place, not only to meet people, but to see incredible prints of films. The Cinematique Francais has one of the best collections of silent films in the world. They’re all the original prints, on nitro.

What was the economy like in Paris, at that time?

It still felt like a kind of hangover from the war in 1950. The tourist thing was just beginning again. There were very few Americans. I remember they still had some rationing and some kind of black bread, a peasant bread, that I found very good but the French were all complaining about it. I guess it wasn’t the baguette that they were used to.

I took a brief trip over to London to meet some of the people at the British Film Institute, and it looked like the war had just ended. In 1950, London had rationing and not enough heat. They hadn’t rebuilt it yet, so it still looked pretty beat up. But I found it a fascinating atmosphere.

Then I went into Germany and saw Frankfurt and it was just miles and miles of pink rubble. The city was bombed to bits. You could see beautiful carvings on one fragment or another. It’s really a pity that all that had to happen to Europe and to its hundreds of years of too-colorful history. I’ve been back since, and from all those fragments the Germans methodically numbered each piece and rebuilt it, so now it looks like it did in medieval times. A lot of their old buildings were rebuilt from scratch, painstakingly, taking nearly twenty years.

Americans has been far too cavalier about their past. A lot of things have been knocked down that shouldn’t have been.

Did you have difficulties getting your work visas in order so that you could work, in Paris?

Well, there never was any of that because I was hired as the personal assistant of Henri Langlois, who was the head of the Cinematique Francais. So, he arranged everything. In other words, I never had to sign a paper or anything. Even though they had a very tempestuous relationship, the money for the Cinematique Francais still came from the French government. They were always threatening to cut him off because he was spending too much. In 1968, Andre Malraux tried to fire Langlios, and all the people came and occupied the Cinematique so that Malraux couldn’t take it away. I remember seeing Truffaut there and quite a few other French directors—Alain Resnais, Marcel Carne. This was the beginning of the 1968 Paris Student Rebellion. Later, in the month of May, there were the street demonstrations, some quite violent.

I feel fortunate that I lived in Paris during that period. I didn’t have to pay for rent when I lived there because I was a guest of the Cinematique Francais. I actually lived in an apartment that was designed by Lazare Meerson, who was the set designer for Rene Clair and all those wonderful films in the ’30s. The apartment, even though it was rather shabby by this time, having gone through the occupation of France, was still ultra-modern. It was designed in 1932 so there were a lot of glass surfaces and chrome furniture. I was literally living in a mirrored booth. Lazare Meerson was one of France’s top set designers.

What kind of a reaction did you get, as an American, from the people?

In Paris, I met people like Francois Truffaut when they were film critics, before they became directors, when they were writing for a journal called Arts, and another one called Cahiers du Cinéma, which is still being published. Their ambition was to become directors, and they were quite friendly, but I did get some different reactions. Godard was never a friend, he was always very hostile to me. At that time he was espousing a kind of Maoism and he considered me a decadent American, an interloper or something. So, I was never friends with Godard even though I admire at least one of his films, Weekend.

I wrote a little bit for the Cahiers du Cinéma myself, and that was the beginning of my Hollywood Babylon books. Because I had told them some of the stories I knew best about old Hollywood, they wanted me to write about them. The stories came to the attention of a French publisher who asked, “Why don’t you turn this into a book and we’ll publish it here?” That’s how that came about. The first book was published by Jean- Jacques Pauvert and it came out in 1959 in Paris, in French.

Where did you get all those pictures?

I had a collection of over 5000 stills, and photographs of Hollywood, which I began collecting as a kid. But it was always for a purpose. I always said, “Someday I’m going to do something with these stills.” So I would ask around. I knew people who worked in the industry so I’d ask if they had any stills, and little by little I built up my collection.

And the books are picture books. In other words, they are meant for you to turn the page and you are as surprised by the picture accompanying the text as you are by the text itself. And so the whole thing is designed to be almost like a movie.

Do you remember where you got the Black Dahlia picture?

 I got the Black Dahlia pictures from a retired detective who worked on the case. He was an alcoholic, and I used to sit and talk with him while he would drink. He would have several drinks and I would have maybe half of one. But you see, I was keeping him company, and he voluntarily just gave me those photographs. And I was the first one to publish those pictures. Hollywood has some fascinating mysteries, but that one has never been officially solved.

Do you remember what the political situation was like in Hollywood when you left?

I was glad to get away from America because probably if it hadn’t been for the McCarthy period of anti-Communist hysteria in the late ’40s and early ’50s I probably would have tried to get a job in a Hollywood studio. I had enough contacts so that I could have at least started in the mail room, which is the classic place where a lot of famous people started. But I found it so unsympathetic. Friends of mine at Columbia Studios were being interrogated for having belonged to some youth organization back in the ’30s that was considered to be left-wing. There was nothing anti-American about it; it was just that people helped each other to find jobs and to try to get some unions going and things like that. But all of the dancers at Columbia decided, as a sign of protest against what was happening at the studio, to quit and move to Paris. So they went there before I did. These were the dancers in all the Rita Hayworth musicals with the choreography by Jack Cole. It was wonderful, they were my American friends. We were all getting away from the ridiculous political situation in Hollywood, which was very unpleasant.

I knew Gale Sondergaard, a very good actress, very sweet, who played the spider woman in Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman. She was very tall and angular and very beautiful—there was really no one else like her—and she couldn’t work anymore because she belonged to some, what they considered to be a left-wing organization. I found the whole thing so ridiculous. I just wanted to get away from it.

So I’ve spent actually more time as an adult in Europe than I have in America. I came back here when my Hollywood Babylon books were going to be published in New York. I rewrote the books, so I had to be in New York for that. That was in the eighties.

I noticed that in “Hollywood Babylon” you only dedicated one paragraph to the murder of Sharon Tate. You included a sentence which made reference to the lives as having been wasted. Whose lives were you referring to?

I have gotten a lot of flack over that sentence. Particularly from the brother of Abigail Folger, who was killed. He called me and talked to me. He told me “Well, you know we really loved Abigail. She was very dear to us. The irony of her being at the wrong place at the wrong time because she really had nothing to do with anything…we thought the whole situation was so bizarre.” He was very polite on the phone. He obviously showed he was a person of breeding. He and Abigail were the heirs of the Folger’s coffee fortune. But she was, nevertheless, brutally killed.

It’s the only line that, in retrospect, I regret writing. I won’t take it out of the book. But I still regret it. What I meant, in my perception at the time, was that all of the people who were involved in the case were kind of like cartoons. I was reducing them to the level of cartoons. They were like caricatures of Hollywood people, or hippies gone bad, or whatever you want to call it. I won’t exactly take it back because that’s how I felt at the time, and if I were to revise that sentence I’d just have to revise everything. It’s a reflection of how I felt at the time.

Your films boast a very interesting array of characters who have participated: Mick Jagger, Marriane Faithful, Anais Nin, Donald Cammell, Bobby Beausoliel. Did they seek you out to participate in your films or were they part of the usual crowd of friends who naturally just ended up being a part of your work?

 All of the people that you mentioned were my friends that just became incorporated into my films. They were part of my surroundings, my landscape. And they were also of a good nature. In other words, there were maybe some friends that I didn’t ask to be in my films, but these I knew would do it. They were creative and liked what I was doing, so they participated.

You implemented a lot of special effects in the days before computer generated images. Were you limited by what was possible to achieve from the equipment at hand, in comparison to what you envisioned in your mind’s eye?

 Well, I had no access to a special effects department like the studios had. Even though things are enormously expensive, you can practically create an image of anything today. In the earlier days I had to think up ways of creating my effects, which were more like George Melies, the French film pioneer, with sometimes very simple superimpositions. I was trying to see how far I could go using these simple means of rewinding the film, getting double exposures, doing dissolves, or printing other colors on top of each other.

Tell me about “Puce Moment.”

 I planned and began to make a film on the old Hollywood of the 1920’s called “Puce Women” and I only made one episode, “Puce Moment,” which was just five minutes of what was supposed to be a feature-length film. The costumes that were shown in the film were my grandmother’s, which she’d left to me from her days as a costume mistress. I’ve since presented them to the Cinematique Francais, where a couple of them are on exhibit in their museum.

I noticed you used the footage again in “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.”

 Yeah, well that’s one of the things I like to do. It’s a bit of a self-reference.

You must have a lot of fun in the editing room.

 I do. That’s the stage of filmmaking that I enjoy most. Basically, when you’re editing, you settle on the material you have, which often is difficult because you might think, “Damn, if I’d only had two or three days more of shooting, I’d have this, that, or the other thing more.” But once you resign yourself to what you’ve got, then you can just find amazing possibilities in what you have available. And you’re also in complete control. Basically, editing, what Eisenstein called “montage,” can be the most exciting and satisfying part of filmmaking. It is the editing that gives the film its rhythm, its tempo and its meter relationships. So, I hope that my editing will be recognized.

I recognized an obvious resemblance between the film Tommy and “Lucifer Rising,” not only in visual style and technique but even in acting direction. Do you notice a marked number of other people’s work that bear similarities to your own?

Wasn’t that by Ken Russell? Well, he’s copied me several times. That one about altered states, he copied a couple of images. I had lightening bolts over the Egyptian pyramids, which is something you would never see in Egypt, but I dreamed it so I put it in. And then it turned up in his film too.

Has he ever given you any credit for inspiration?

 No. The only one that has used some of my ideas and has given me credit is Martin Scorsese. He saw “Scorpio Rising” and it gave him the idea of using pop music as a soundtrack for Mean Streets. He told me that and he has also written it.

I don’t know about David Lynch, with Blue Velvet. I used “Blue Velvet” as a song in my film “Scorpio Rising” in 1964, and his film Blue Velvet was many years later. So I was the first one to use it. But the music was around. I’m not even sure if he’s ever even seen my film. People keep saying, “You’ve obviously been an influence on David Lynch,” but I’m not so sure about that.

Has anyone ever formally given you credit for making the first music video, which you obviously did?

Well, they have it in print. There have been a few references to “the Godfather of music videos.” I have gotten a few awards in my time, like the Maya Deren Award at the American Film Institute, which is a little Tiffany crystal star. But, the interesting thing is that none of these people who produce music videos has ever thought of offering me the chance to do one.

A couple of bands have approached me. One was called Combustible Edison. They sent me a tape and asked me if I would like to do a video for them. The name of the piece of music on the tape was “Bluebeard,” and apparently their idea was something to do with the myth of Bluebeard and the wives that he slaughtered, which is a rather grim legend. But, I told them I didn’t want to do it. In other words, I really have to be deeply in love with a piece of music before I’ll want to make a movie. So that was that.

Tell me about that piece by Andy Arthur that you used in “Rabbit’s Moon.” The date on the film is 1950. Was he making that kind of music that far ahead of time?

 No, I put the music on later. Andy was a young man I met in England. I showed it to him silent, because for years I didn’t have any soundtrack. Then he said, “Well, I’ll do some music for it.” So he took his guitar and he did “I Am a Hermit.” That was a fortunate thing. It was an original piece of music and he just gave it to me.

Later on, Mick Jagger did the same with the music for my film “Invocation of My Demon Brother,” which was basically just percussion on the Moog synthesizer. It’s quite unpleasant, actually, a lot of people really don’t like it. But I wanted that. I wanted something very dissonant and invasive.

Bobby Beausoliel did the music for the second version of “Lucifer Rising.” In his case, even though he is serving a life term in prison, he was able to record it with other prisoners. With the help of the head psychiatrist of the prison system, a wonderful woman by the name of Dr. Minerva Berthols, who is now retired, I was able to arrange it. She arranged for me to be able to bring a tape recorder into the prison, to record music played on the instruments that they had in the prison. The other musicians were also in on long-term sentences. They came from that San Francisco culture where they’d all been musicians, some of them had been in some rather well-known bands. So that worked out well. I think it’s the only time that’s ever happened.

Did you know Bobby Beausoliel when he was part of the Manson Family?

No. We had a disagreement when I found that he had lied to me over something rather serious. I’d given him some money to buy some amplifiers and instead he bought a rather large amount of marijuana. What you’d call a kilo, like a bale of hay. He’d stored this in my studio without telling me. He was about nineteen at the time. If anyone had found this, I would have been busted. So I told him, “OK, you can take your drugs and get out. It’s over. I’m not going to work with you anymore.”

He still had my van, and he came back a few nights later. He’d waited for a night when I was out, and he broke into my studio and stole all of the footage that he could see of the film, the first “Lucifer Rising.”

Then he took it and the van and went to southern California. The van broke down in the San Fernando Valley on the road in front of Spahn ranch, where the Manson family was living. He was there on the highway, trying to get the van working, and the girls invited him to come and live with them. And unfortunately, he accepted. He didn’t see any reason not to. But that’s how he got mixed up with the Manson Family. He was in jail at the time that Sharon Tate was killed, but he killed a musician named Gary Hinman in Topanga Canyon over a drug deal that went wrong. So that’s all part of the folklore of California.

So that would account for the ten-year span of a date for “Lucifer Rising.”

Well, often I’d run out of money. I’d start making the film and I was determined to finish it, but I’d run out of money. Then I’d have to wait until I’d earn some more. So, that’s why some of my films have long dates, till I finally could release it with the music I wanted in more or less the final print. Though there are still some films I’d like to go back and tweak a little bit.

How did the obituary idea come to you?

After the film had been stolen, I was thoroughly disgusted. Also, the date on the obituary was from my first film to the time when it was written. It wasn’t of my death, even though some people thought it was. I must admit that it’s the sort of thing that I did at the time, but if a similar situation were to occur today I wouldn’t do it again. I’ve always admired Salvador Dali and his publicity stunts, so it was a little bit of that kind of thing. And it did stir up quite a bit of a ruckus.

But you did make friends again with Bobby.

It was easier to make friends with him after he was behind bars, and I went to visit him in prison.

What brought you to that, though?

Well, he had a lot of good qualities. It’s very unfortunate that he ever got mixed up with somebody like Charlie Manson. Actually killing someone, that’s about the worst you can do and I don’t make any excuses for it. But I’m quite capable of seeing in people a good side and a bad side. My training with Aliester Crowley has shown me that people have a shadow side and a bright side, and Bobby certainly had that.

He’s very talented in the sense that he’s still recording in prison. We didn’t discuss the crime, but he was actually quite optimistic. He was discussing music he wanted to do, paintings he wanted to do. He no longer had a chip on his shoulder.

I heard a rumor that you had done LSD with Aldous Huxley. Is that true?

Well, I was like fourteen at the time. My grandmother knew Aldous. He just lived up the hill when I lived with her in Hollywood. I experimented with it at that time. I certainly have no more interest in pursuing it.

Later on, I also knew Stanley Owsley who was the chemist that made the best LSD, working out of Berkeley. It was interesting, certainly, but that was then and as an artist I am glad that I experienced it.

I met Tim Leary, but I always thought of him as kind of a false prophet of sorts. What was that saying of his, “Tune in, Turn on, Drop out”? I always thought that was just silly, because life is not something you drop out of.

What did you think of Andy Warhol?

I never met him. He had that something that I never had, which was that commercial knack to make a fortune. But I never liked his aesthetic, which to me was a trashy aesthetic. I always tried to make my films as good as I could with their limitations. I never set out to make deliberate trash, whereas he did. That was just his aesthetic; he embraced bad techniques as a style, and that’s OK. I’ve seen his films, but I don’t consider myself a fan.

How do you perceive your work as being received by popular culture today?

Some of my films have made a mark and will be remembered at least as a footnote.

Significantly, considering the fact that I’ve made my films with practically no money at all. But I think they’ll be remembered as part of twentieth-century pop culture, and I’m glad I made some contribution. Of course, I’m not so sure about the twenty-first century.

Do you find that your views tend to change as you get older?

Basically, I’m the same. I may not be quite as vocal about certain things as I once was. You’re supposed to get more conservative as you get older, but in my case I just think it’s more a kind of settling in to yourself. I’m not conflicted anymore, which, I suppose is the nature I was to a certain extent. But I’ve sort of found myself, more or less. There are a few things I’m still working on, like procrastination and things like that, but today I’m pretty happy with myself.

What was your first introduction to the teachings of Aliester Crowley, and when did you count yourself as a disciple?

Well, he’s been with me since I was a teenager. I was a friend of Marjorie Cameron, the widow of the rocket scientist Jack Parsons who invented the fuel that took the Apollo to the moon. Parsons was very interested in Crowley and was in fact his magical son, who, if he hadn’t been killed in the explosion, might have inherited the job of running the order, OTO. Marjorie had a lot of the Crowley books, so, from my teenage years I began collecting the books and studying them. I haven’t gotten tired of them. In other words, he still amazes me every time I open a book and I come across a sentence that seems to apply very much to what I’m doing.

 What were the elements that positioned themselves to bring about your embracing of Crowley’s beliefs? Were you consciously seeking? 

Well, I just felt a strong affinity with them. At the time that I came across the books, it was like I’d found a friend in Crowley. I just fell right into his philosophy, and also his use of paradox. He had a great sense of humor. You have to understand his sense of humor, because he can make some outrageous statements, and you have to realize which are tongue-in-cheek and which are to be taken straight. He also did things, called “blinds,” which seem to be completely false, but a blind is something that you work around and he’ll always give you clues. And, of course, they are written in a kind of fascinating code which I just found very intriguing. And I still do.

How do you view “Satan”?

Satan is just a concept. I’m not a satanist and I don’t have any attraction to that element. Crowley wasn’t a satanist either. There is a lot of confusion over that. Crowley was called “the wickedest man in the world” by Lord Beaverbrook, who wrote editorials in the Sunday Express, which is like the News of the World in England today. It was the most trashy-minded tabloid journalism, that’s how they sold papers, you see. So, the label has sort of stuck with Crowley. It amused him for a while, but then it became sort of a burden.

Crowley was kicked out of Italy because of the press in England. The papers got back to Mussolini and his newly established fascist regime in the early ’20s and in 1923 Crowley was given orders to leave Italy. Mussolini had a strong animosity towards England, anyway, and then the idea that there was this strange English guy doing weird things with a lot of wives. They didn’t understand all these women around Crowley, so they thought he had a lot of wives. There were articles published in Italy at the time calling him a Mormon, which was hilarious.

The Fascists found enough excuse. Crowley was getting bad press because someone had died in Cheffali, which is where he lived. A student from Oxford died because he drank water and got typhoid fever, but by the time this story got back to England this was supposed to have been a human sacrifice. So that was typical of the kind of exaggerated nonsense.

What about your own reputation? Is that exaggerated nonsense, or did you kind of feed into it for publicity?

No, I’m just myself. I never do anything deliberately. About the most exaggerated thing I’ve ever done—which was more of a reaction to despair—would be something like the obituary. But, I received an incredible amount of encouragement, after that, and was very soon convinced that I should begin making films again.

Do you have any other works in the archives of Anger, that have yet to be made available to public viewing?

I have about a dozen unfinished projects. I may decide to release them on DVD at some point. Even though some of them are very short, if I were to put all of the fragments together they would become a rather interesting mosaic.

More recently, I’ve begun working on video because I can afford that. 16mm has just become too expensive for me. I do my cutting on an Avid. I now have three new finished projects. One, in fact, is titled “Don’t Smoke That Cigarette” and was originally screened at a film festival in Amsterdam. It was also viewed in America at the Conference for Disinformation in New York in February.

What do you consider your shortcomings?

The inability to hustle money. When I’ve run out of money, I’m just too proud to go asking.

I’ve had a few grants, but usually they were the ones that were rather effortless. I’ve received a Ford Foundation grant, the National Endowment grant, and the New York State Art grant. But, the more difficult ones, like the Guggenheim, I’ve never gone after because they require what to me are onerous propositions. For example, the fact that I need to have four people to attest that I’m a good citizen, and that sort of thing. I find that so insulting. But, by the same token, everyone that gets a Guggenheim has to do it. Then, I look at the list of people who have gotten a Guggenheim…

The reason I haven’t made more films is just the hassle of raising money, and I find it difficult to set aside, out of my book royalties, enough to make a movie. Even 16mm is no longer so affordable.

How do you feel about the choices that you’ve made in your life?

I think I’m pretty happy. I’ve had a couple of ideas for commercial features and I’ve often thought that if I could have pursued them a little bit more aggressively that perhaps I could have gotten a feature made. I do have ideas about feature films. In other words, I’m not so much in an ivory tower that I don’t have any interest in commercial films. But I do not have the personality to go after a commercial career, and I never did. What I know about Hollywood and the film industry is enough to make me back away from it.

At one point in the ’60s when “Scorpio Rising” got quite a big play in theaters from all of the publicity, a producer did come to me and say, “We’ll use the title and remake it as a commercial feature. Only, of course, you’ll have to add a girlfriend and dialogue and narrative.” And I said, “Well then, it’s another film. It’s not my film anymore if I do all that.” So that fell apart. In a sense, I’m kind of sorry I didn’t, maybe, try it. But I didn’t.

I’ve had a few times like that, that I regret. I’ve only worked once on 35mm, and that’s when I filmed “Rabbit’s Moon.” I’d like to do more work on 35mm.

Do you still have it in your heart to do more films if the means were available to you?

Absolutely.

How do you want to be remembered?

As a maverick. An individualist. As an artist. I do consider myself an artist.

I hope that my films will survive in some form. I’m moving on soon to have them available on DVD, which seems to be a pretty permanent record. So I hope that maybe a hundred years from now someone can still manage to look at something that looks like my films.

 ****************

THE WORKS OF KENNETH ANGER

FERDINAND THE BULL  –  1938

WHO HAS BEEN ROCKING MY DREAMBOAT?  –  1941

ESCAPE EPISODE  –  1946

FIREWORKS  –  1947

PUCE MOMENT  –  1949

RABBIT’S MOON  –  1950

EAUX D’ARTIFICE  –  1953

INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME  –  1954

HOLLYWOOD BABYLON  (book, French release)  –  1959

SCORPIO RISING  –  1964

KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS  –  1965

INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER  –  1969

LUCIFER RISING  –  1970-1980

HOLLYWOOD BABYLON  (book, American release)  –  1975

HOLLYWOOD BABYLON II  (book)  –  1984

DON’T SMOKE THAT CIGARETTE  –  1998

BOY SCOUTS IN THE GERMAN REICH  –  1999

BACTERIA PIE  –  2000

MEN WE WANT TO HANG  –  2002

The post Understanding Anger appeared first on "Amass Magazine".

This margin of victory would’ve been much greater had the party aggressively recruited the diversity of voices it once represented. The party leadership spent considerable time and resources to support moderates and defeat progressives to solidify its centrist course. This despite polls showing that most Americans support the issues the progressives represent (though not the label!). The form of democracy within the Democratic Party has repressed the democratic potential in the larger society.

The party has consumed cyberspace with its top-down rhetoric of “diversity,” a laudable moral inspiration for sure that has led to the greater demographic inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities. But a more inclusive diversity is lacking in the party, one that pays more attention to the class status of those successfully included while more broadly representing the economically disadvantaged. And this broadening need not eclipse the importance of the cultural categories of race and multiculturalism.

As Thomas Frank has recently shown, the Democratic Party has been moving toward the center since the 1970s, courting the suburban and educated legions of the electorate to compete with the Republicans. Polls from the last two election cycles show that those making under $50,000 a year from all racial and ethnic groups are trending toward the Republicans.

The Democrats’ legislation to compensate students for their loan indebtedness, for example, speaks volumes about its priorities. In failing to address the causes of this problem, it offers no distinction between those who reaped the benefits of college and can repay their loans, and those who either didn’t go to college or haven’t received sufficient rewards from their degrees to retire them. And it ignores the plight of those in the lower and working classes who could never attend. The Democrats of course have been pushing the fast-track into college for some time while slighting those who have neither the aptitude nor the interest in college, reflected in their weak support for unions and their reluctance to develop workable programs to expand the trades. Expanding the competitive field to get more bodies into college will not fundamentally alter the inequality gap between the educated and the un-educated, the urban and rural populations.

Instead of working to transform the party to become fully diverse, the Democrats are shoring up their current position, even moving further to the right. Hakeem Jeffries is being hailed as the voice of the new generation. Appropriately, since he fits the image perfectly of cultural inclusiveness. But despite his claim—on Meet the Press, 1/8/23—that the Democratic Party represents everyone, he has been at odds with the progressives’ support for the lower and working classes for some time. Tragically, as mentioned, since the progressives only want a return to the days when the Democratic Party represented this larger diversity.

Instead of reversing these trends to expand its base of support, and delivering a more inclusive democracy, the Biden administration and the Democratic Party elite have repeatedly targeted MAGA as a “fascist” threat to democracy. However credible such comments might be, this rhetorical flourish helps them avoid the issue of how they’ve managed to lose so many of their traditional supporters to the Republicans and the MAGA movement. These have captured a significant number of the lower and working classes abandoned by the Democratic Party, especially the less educated populace in rural America. Seduced is a better word since MAGA and the larger Republican Party offer no real solutions. It’s a reactive populism.

This being the case, the issue then is how and why citizens who’ve traditionally supported the values of the Democratic Party could end up essentially going against their own interests and supporting a movement that negates these values. This hasn’t happened overnight. Years and years of exclusion since the Democratic Party’s move to the center have spawned irreversible damage. The average wages for workers have been essentially stagnant since then, the moment when inequality began to increase. This decline in the standard of living has compounded alienation over time.

This alienation, and not simply the blockage from representation, explains why so many victims of this decline believe their interests are served by a reactive populism, one that bodes little help for correcting these conditions; and not a progressive populism, one that proposes to return the Democrats to its roots as the party of the economically excluded. They’re also drawn by a powerful symbolism: the strident rhetoric from charismatic figures that promises to take care of all problems with authority; appeals to a faux nostalgia for a world that never existed; and success at blaming the real victims of our problems which only serves to detract from their essential causes.

The Democrats must broaden its policies to lure these disaffected citizens back into the fold. Failing this, we will be faced with continual stalemate and extremist ideologies.

The post Whose Democracy Was Protected in the 2022 Election? appeared first on "Amass Magazine".

“I don’t think I’ve ever…met him,” says the woman mostly to herself, scoping the portable plasterboard-stand near the entrance pasted with clippings and reminiscences, like something there might help her be more decisive.

 “Why did you come, then?” I ask.

“Oh, I heard he was a real cool guy and…my coworker said he was comin’ and he usually knows where the action is.” She turns toward me gradually as she speaks.

“Where are you…oh!” She pulls away sharply and utters a stifled shriek. “Was that you speaking to me?” Who are you?” She now speaks without looking directly at me.

“I think so…I’m a…just a member of the crowd.” She ponders this for a few seconds and rushes away into the path of another woman.

Have I met her before?

“Hi, Cheryl…great to see you!” says the woman. I haven’t seen you since the crafts fair down in the Port. Oh, these vibes! I’m so glad we came.”

“Wouldn’t miss an Irish wake, especially when it’s in the hood. This is my daughter, Eulene. We’re hopin’ this will be a good play date for her. What was your name…again?”

“Dorota.”

“Oh, sure. I remember.”

“Did you ladies know the…guest of honor?” I ask, wedging between the two. Dorota effervesces a silent shriek as Cheryl pivots to face me, her hesitation suggesting she anticipated someone else, the voice tone revealing an anxious recognition. “Did you…know him?”

“As much as I could under the…circumstances.”

“What cir…cumstances do you mean?” asks Dorota, now staring directly at me. A woman steps between us, defraying the answer and scrambling her stare.

“Norma…is that you?” asks Cheryl. “I haven’t seen you for years!” Cheryl pulls her away from me to a table as Dorota sashays through the crowd.

I can’t believe she’s here!

“Did you see that clipping on the board, Norma?” quips Cheryl. “Remember the guy who climbed up the Thomas Bridge and screamed at everybody? They had to get a crane to get him down. This is him.”

“Seems like I remember something like that. How long ago was it?”

“Oh, it said it was…”

“…I remember that well. It was about four years ago. But there were a lot of different opinions about what really happened,” I add.

“Did you know him…personally?” asks Cheryl.

“Well…in a certain way.”

She seems to be trying to capture my whole appearance without showing it. Why is she so stern and cross-eyed?

“You mean he was a family member or…a relative?”

She winces while looking at me straight on, nervously glomming all details of my appearance like she’s trying to commit them to memory.

“Something like that.” I angle my face slowly away and slip through a lane of conversations as she lofts her voice toward me.  

“I think I saw your picture…somewhere.” She stretches to glimpse me slip into a denser group of partiers around a small stage where a few musicians are stroking their wares. The muted instrumental covers of the Pogues piped into this spacious cabin are being replaced by tin-whistle-and-fiddle rhythms.

Ah, a roost behind the refreshments table. They really laid it out. I wonder who was responsible.

Cheryl wends through the fringe of the area to the rear with a perplexed expression on her face as the music electrifies the crowd, transforming complacent mourners into stricken performers.

Should I participate? These posters on the wall…where did they get them? I have to get a double shot of Jameson’s. Alan the bartender doesn’t give me a second look. Why is he so…dour? I didn’t think he was capable of mourning.

Cheryl appears, her expression now absorbed in the music, and delivers a monologue to the assembly, rapturous until fixing on me with a blank stare. The crowd expands and seems to consume her.

“I think he…an argument with…” A twenties something woman nearby, attired in ripped denim and an ILWU tee who’s gyrating on the lap of a portly bearded male, can barely be heard over the din of the music decibels. Less than fully engrossed in the physical contortions, she peruses the crowd like she’s trying to find someone.

“I don’t recognize him,” says the male.

She was at Leland’s Café last year, kicking off the run to Diablo Canyon!

“You said he had an argument…who with?”

“His ex, or girlfriend from what I heard. It got out of control I guess and…”

Why is she looking at me like that?

She swivels off the male’s lap but loses a direct sightline toward me as she plants her feet. I slip behind a nearby couple.

I never really knew her. What is she thinking?

“Didn’t we party with him that one night at…”

Probably the loft down on 7^th but…I don’t remember this couple.

I ease away from them and slip across the room to a nook that partially shields me from a group feasting on the amenities, mostly the liquid form, while scoping the crowd for more surprises.

I don’t recognize these people or anyone else.

“Let’s head over to Leland’s…this place is…I don’t know anybody here and…who’re they celebrating anyway?” The voice blusters from a male bug-eyed with boredom and robed in the colors of a local biker club. He fidgets with his keys and turns sharply to the woman next to him as if soliciting her opinion.

“I’m for that! Why did we come here anyway? Never heard of this dude. And where’s the body?” The woman, with frizzed-out blondish hair fanning out from her face like her body is plugged into a nearby circuit, is gripping her empty glass protectively with both hands. She looks around the space, poring over every detail several times.

What is she looking for? Does she really think there’s a body somewhere in this building?

“There isn’t one!” spurts a tall and wispy blonde dancing with herself nearby. “Heard a woman who claims to be his legal wife snatched it…wanted to make sure she’ll cash in on the dude’s goodies.”

“Likely excuse,” says the male. “Probably isn’t one anyway. These people…aren’t they known for their make-believe worlds? Let’s get otta here!”

Good riddance. He should believe in something!

I rise and inch stealthily from the nook, the woman jerking a glance in my direction. But she quickly jerks back like she doesn’t seem to see anything. I slide past the table and lock on her. She zooms my face and holds her glance for a few seconds before turning away with a frightened expression, her glass crashing to the floor.

I thought I recognized her. Where was it?

Pondering this question, I wend through the thicket of revelers toward the rear where there’s a jam session taking shape. Microphone tests and amplifier screeches give way to a mottled rendition of U2. The crowd seems much different here, more like committed music fans who could be performing anywhere.

“Did you know the guest of honor?” I ask a woman riveted to the rhythms. No answer. I repeat the question and she swivels toward me, giving the entire space a quizzical glance before resuming her trance. I tap her on the shoulder, and she swivels around again but stays focused on one space.

“Oh, there you are…I couldn’t quite…see you…could you be quiet…they’re workin’ on a demo.”

I meander to the front, the crowd so thick I have to squeeze between immoveable bodies. One of them refuses to budge despite my mannerly overture. The more I push to create a space the more vigorously this person fills it. I see now that it’s a woman. Her head is draped in a multi-colored gypsy scarf. She finally turns to face me and bolts backward, pushing the bodies with her, leaving ample space for me to shuffle through. She wraps her arms around herself as if she’s experiencing a slight shiver.  

I make it through the crowd, stopping not far from the entrance, and pivot around for a glance while stepping to the exit. It cascades into a discordance of whispers. Then some backstep gingerly while Cheryl and Dorota and a new male face, lurch forward. The whispers reverse cascade to silence.

 “Is it…him?” blurts an anxious voice from the rear.

 “I can’t…tell,” adds another closer to the front. “Could you move into the light so we can see you better?”

“Yes…yes, we want to see your face more clearly,” says Cheryl. “I thought I recognized you earlier from somewhere.”

I step a few paces to the left. Several faces in the crowd develop enlightened expressions and begin to converse quizzically, taking ever more frequent glances at the front.

“We still can’t make you out,” interjects Dorota.

“I guess I have one of those…faces.”

A woman slips free from the crowd and approaches the front stealthily, squinting. “It is you. Why are you here?” Amid riveting gawks someone screams, and I inch toward the doorway.

“Thanks for coming!” blurts Cheryl.

He vanishes through the doorway.  

The post The Wake appeared first on "Amass Magazine".

She sits in the lotus position on her kitchen table, mesmerized by the pigeons zigzagging across the leaden sky, their movements somehow in rhythm with her breathing patterns. One finally breaks formation and flits to the ledge, diluting her focus. She takes a deep breath. It seems to notice this change and stares at her for several seconds. She opens the window and cups the bird inside to a table next to the window which contains a plate of seed. Its cheeps pitch through undulating octaves of appreciation and it swivels and bobs toward her while she starts to meditate again. After a few minutes her cell flashes. She tries to keep the intrusion at bay but finally snaps to attention and returns the call. The bird closely observes the conversation.
“Hi, is this…who is this?” she asks, like she’s suddenly distracted and can’t recall what she was going to say.
“You mean you forgot me already!” the caller spouts. “Has your caller ID gone on the fritz?”
“No, I know…I know. I was going to call you soon. I…I’ve been trying to relax. The weather’s depressing. I have to have sun…more light.”
“You’ll feel better once you’re outside and moving around…that’s the best therapy for cabin fever.”
“I think I have a…little fever but…I don’t think I can go out right now and…be around people.”
“I’m not people I’m…remember what we did last night…you said you…your face was…radiant.”
“I know…that was yesterday? What did I do? Who are…”
“… you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I am…no, no, these walls are closing in but…I’ve got my companion, my friend…I wanna fly with my friend and be free!”
“Did you stop taking what they gave you?”
Her friend begins to flap its wings and utter slightly different cheeps and she perks up, their timbre and structure approximating a message that she thinks she understands. It…wants to fly with me, she muses.
“Lucy, Lucy…are you there?” He hears strange noises but no answer. Is there interference on the line? She swoons, stricken by the bird’s alliterating sounds. “Lucy…Lucy…you okay?”
“Who’s this?”
“Who do you think it…”
“…sorry, I got distracted. If I could just…if there was just more…light!”
“Let’s meet like we planned. I’m across from Big Daddy’s.”
“Will you be my daddy…take care of me”
“We can…take care of each other.”
“Can you give me…’member what we talked about? That was you?”
“I…I think so. What exactly do you…”
“…you know what I want. Can you give me…”
“…shouldn’t we take things a little slower?”
“No, no, I want…”
“…where should we meet?”
“I don’t know…if I…”
“…Sidewalk Café bar at five for happy hour.”
“Okay, yeah…I want to be with you. I love being with you!” She looks at the bird as it starts to cheep wildly and clasps it in a loving embrace.

Parsing the zones of steamy torpor in front of the Bistro on the way inside, he finds a space near the end of the bar being vacated by a couple and bellies up, retrieving his cell from his pocket and glomming onto it like it’s a cocked weapon. He looks around the room for familiar faces but the twilight fumes cast shadows on them, making recognition difficult. And the view of the boardwalk and beyond to the stretch of sand is obstructed by bobbing heads. While making his final perusal he touches the trigger and looks for conspicuous movement since the momentary buzz of merriment would muffle phone noises.
“Thought you’d be off somewhere experiencing romantic bliss,” quips the waitress as she glides by teetering a tray of drafts to a threesome nearby.
“No bliss…more of a near miss,” he bellows through the din, waiting for her to creep back in his direction. “We were supposed to meet and…well, she didn’t show. And after a very promising chat too!”
“I think I saw her yesterday. Does she skate?”
“I’ve never seen her…but who doesn’t along the beach!”
“She was racing up and down the boardwalk and going pretty fast, weaving through crowds of people. She seemed bursting with energy, wearing a constant, euphoric smile but not much else! Her top was looped around her neck like a kerchief. Pieces of her hair were sticking straight out like her body was plugged into an electric socket. She was getting a big crowd around her until the cops…”
“…I doubt if that was her…she’s…”
“…you should probably think about changing your dating service!”

She creeps along Andalusia toward Abbot Kinney feeling like the low overhanging branches from the trees are choking her and juts into an alley. Taking a respite on a bench behind a garage, she looks back to see if she’s being followed. She’s already a half-hour late for her appointment since for the past fifteen hours or so she has had a hard time getting out of bed. Now that she’s finally outside in the bright of day the world seems like it’s closing in on her. Her therapist will give her something to pick her up if she can only get there. A woman with streaks of pink and purple hair appears around the side of the garage across the way into her frozen gaze and pulls back, bug-eyed, reversing her path. Why is she looking at me like that? A baby raccoon hobbles from the brush near her and scampers up the alley. Maybe my therapist will come and get me! She shakily scrolls down the list of contacts and pins her choice.
“Can you…I can’t move, can you come and…get me?”
“Who’s this? Is it you…Lucy?”
“Yes, yes, it’s…me. Can you…”
“…it’s me. Who you trying to reach? What’s going on? I’ve been calling and calling and…”
“…aren’t you…can you help me? I have to talk to…who are…”
“…it’s me!”
“How did you…I need to get to…”
“…where are you?”
“…I don’t know. I have to get to…”
“Where? Hello. Lucy, you there? Hello!”
“I have to…can you come and help me…take me to…”
“…where are you?”
“I…by this garage and…”
“…what are the cross streets?”
“Near…I can’t remember. I don’t see any signs.”
“Are you near Abbot Kinney?”
“I think so.”
“Stay where you are. I’ll come and…try to find you.”
“I have to hurry…I’m late.”
“I’m on my way. Keep your phone open. We were supposed to meet the other day at the Sidewalk Café but you didn’t show up.”
“I…wanted to but I couldn’t go out.”
“Were you skating on the boardwalk?”
“No…yeah, I like to…it relaxes me. When do you…mean?”
“Recently…yesterday.”
“I…don’t remember when…they said I should see someone and…”
“…I’m on my way.”

So much has happened since their first breakfast at Mao’s restaurant. The tables outside were starting to fill with beachgoers, tourists, and workers from the nearby businesses as the remaining patches of gauzy cloud lifted. Specimens from the city’s shadow society spilled onto the sidewalk from the alley. A trio of skateboarders trolled by and leaped off the curb in formation, jutting across the street through the horns and screeching brakes.
They peered at each other through a mist of prurience, foregoing direct eye contact for fear of dulling the senses stoked from their newly discovered attraction, or perhaps forcing a premature intimacy that might consume them with mind games and block their mutual explorations that intensified the previous night. They might not know what to say or say the wrong thing, plunging their relationship into oblivion.
“What’ll you guys have?” asks the waitress, pulling their gazes out of the mist toward her.
“Oh…I’ll just have the commune pancakes and a Tsingtao,” he instantly responds.
“I guess I’ll have the same, but no beer, just water,” she says, waiting for the waitress to slip back inside. “I just took my… medication. It’s not really, though. My therapist called it some kind of salt that will…I don’t know…make me less active I guess…level me out so I won’t…”
“…you do seem different than yesterday,” he returns, now managing to look her directly in the eye.
She hesitates and looks at him like she’s surprised at who he is, her irises small, flat-brown saucers ringed with a pinkish-white.
“I feel kind of drained, like everything’s been flushed out of me. Last night I guess a lot was, and…”
“…you’re dressed a lot different and you seem like you’re preoccupied. Is something bothering you?”
“No, I…well, about last night I…” The waitress places their orders on the table, interrupting her conclusion, and stares at her like she’s anticipating an enlightening comment. Then she breaks away and the waitress twirls to the door. “Why was she staring at me like that?”
“She’s probably struck by your…presence.”
“The stuff we did last night…I don’t know if I can do that…again.”
“What…what do you mean?”
“I mean…you know, when you…” She peers away at the cars passing by and then up into the sky. “I can’t see…you don’t look the same. Everything seems covered with a film and it won’t stay still.”
“It must be the stuff your therapist gave you. Are you sure it’s gonna do you some good? The best things to put in your body are natural…things that grow from the land or synthetics refined from them.”
“It helps I think most of the…sometimes I have to give it more time but…it keeps me from getting too down.”
“You don’t seem like the type that…”
“…once in a while I forget to take it and I…well, I get kinda…”
“…yesterday you seemed more natural and spontaneous.”
“But those things we did…I’m afraid of going too…”
“…you weren’t on it yesterday?”
“I…got my schedule confused and…”
“…you should purge your body, get off that stuff. It’s blocking the real you. How long have you been seeing that therapist?”
“Not too long…probably about two months.”
“That’s not very long. Who is it?”
“He’s really…cool…very sensitive to my needs. A friend recommended him. He reads my palms and has these cards that…he explains.”
“Wow…he might be putting poison in your body and messing with your mind. I have a friend who experiments with mind-expanding herbs, natural substances that bring out the true self. They make the body healthier. He has a proven…”
“…I’d like to expand my mind but I don’t know for sure what that means. About last night…I can’t…go on without…remember what we talked about?”
“I’m not…sure. What do you mean?”
“I need a family and…”
“You mean you want to…”
“…yes…I want to…”
“…but as you said, we don’t know each other…”
“…not now but I…need a commitment.”
“Well, you need to stop taking that salt…purify your body and your mind will follow. After that I’ll get you something that will help you see differently…better.”

He thumbs the redial on his cell again as he weaves through the boardwalk amblers, staring at the screen like his visual intensity might conjure an answer to the call. As it goes to message he tries to block out the din in hopes of finally hearing one and gestures futilely at the void. A cold draft swaddles him as he approaches the Bistro and he follows the floating patches of low cloud inside. Suddenly all traces of sun are gone and he takes a seat at the end of the bar. The crowd is sparse, as if the sun-worshippers can’t face a day without Hyperion’s full streaming.
“Well, long time no see, stranger!” blurts the waitress asshe hustles through the door from the patio with orders. “Any luck in locating your skater?”
“Not for a while…and been wearing out my phone again.” He raises his cell and grins, thumbing the redial in exclamation.
“I haven’t seen her since that time. Like I said, you need to get a new dating service.”
He places the phone close enough to his ear to hear her answer and at an angle to his face so he can see the screen and waits, but this time there’s not even a message. The cyber-blips stretch on until he finally cancels the call, staring flush into the screen like it might still be possible for her voice to register in defiance of technology.
The waitress, tray-less, slips onto the stool next to him. “I’ve got a short break coming. What’s the latest in this drama?”
“I saw her about a week ago…she called me. Actually, she was calling her therapist and buzzed me by accident. Thanks to her shaky hand and the luck of the alphabet. She was lost in an alley and wanted her therapist to come and get her, bring her to his place so he could give her…something to get her energy back. I’d already gotten her to dump some palm reader who was giving her these salt tablets to…supposedly…even her out. I got her to stop taking those but she’s been very uneven ever since, doing some pretty strange things. Anyway, I went to the alley and she was nearly unconscious on a bench. She wanted me to take her to her therapist and I agreed but when we got there I had a bad feeling since he gave her all sorts of pills with strange names. I pulled her out of there and told her to hang on a little longer and to definitely not take anything else until she purified her system. I set her up with this friend who experiments with mind-expanding natural substances.”
“You mean like…mushrooms?”
“Yeah, but more like the derivatives from peyote…mescaline. He’s kept up with all the research and has been trying to refine and perfect them for years. He works out of his pad above a garage behind Clubhouse. It’s full of vials and canisters and smoking kettles and…lots of curious odors. He said she came by his place not long after that and he gave her his latest concoction. His name’s Krassly. Know him?”
“Yeah, I think I do. Has long wiry hair and a pockmarked face?”
“That’s him.”
“I met him through my friend Rhoda who lives on Clubhouse. But I’ve never taken any of his substances.”
“They smooth you out and relax you…get you to see better and relate to people better and more equally. Not the spacey journey into your mind’s recesses that most people think. No side effects and…they’re not addictive.”
“You sold me. But I can’t imagine what it might do to your…beach goddess.”
“It’s the chemical answer to the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. All of our mental and physical defects stew in a pot and disappear in the cuisine of human improvement. We had some amazing moments when we first met. I can’t imagine what…”
“…he can do all of that on a stove above a garage?”
“It does seem kind of…medieval, I suppose, but he’s as accomplished as a Nobel scientist. The system’s not into his brand of awareness…only profit.”
“Hopefully it’s not like grandma in the kitchen…little of this, little of that and perfecto…no need for a written recipe. But sometimes she misses a spice or two and the meatloaf flops. What if the subject is allergic or…doesn’t get purified?”

The building on Abbot Kinney sits between an upscale boutique and a valet restaurant, and there are no signs or other markings on its facade that broadcast what goes on inside. It needs paint and the windows are boarded up. The dozers could be lying in wait to remove this eyesore. But if from a distance it seems like a dead zone, merely a bridge between consumer spaces, up close it’s another matter. On any given day and often into the wee hours you can feel the vibrations as you approach it. And as you stroll by, the sounds radiate from inside: shrieks, wails, yelps, howls, impassioned pleas, testimonials, expressions of unbearable pain transiting through degrees of pleasure toward ecstasy. Some passersby sense that these are from a revival meeting, that the space is a new storefront worshipping venue for those disaffected by the denominations, others that they’re witnessing an outbreak of New Age orgy. It’s a bit of both, perhaps, and likely all the more reason why its days are numbered. But its designated identity is a place of healing, a clinic. The clusters of health-seekers don’t pray with borrowed scripts or to an extraneous spirit, but to a force that bonds souls that need to get their feelings out and revive the intensity of life, one that compensates for too much quiet reflection and restraint. In sharing their edgy emotions in a confined space they can mate or get suspended in loops of hate and spite, forcing a reset.
He slogs through the soft sand in the final stretch of his workout, ducking an errant Frisbee, and plops on a mound above the water. Several surfers deadhead through the roiling water toward the shore and he can virtually feel the tactile sensations from surviving a sated face-off with nature. He decides to get his board.
The clap of a wave delays his response to his cell. The call is from Lucy. He eagerly listens to the message because it has been several days since their last connection. It’s barely comprehensible due to the loud background noise but she seems excited, like maybe he’s caught her in an upbeat mood. He hastily fingers a reply but checks himself and cancels the call, dropping his head back onto a mound of sand to rekindle his reverie while fighting off the urge to redial. He wonders now what he can possibly say to her. The dashed hopes from the repeated attempts to connect with her have taken their toll, and now that she’s finally accessible he can’t quite muster the energy. Maybe she’s back to…normal or…something even better, he reflects, recalling their early moments together. Maybe she’s in trouble and needs help. He hits the redial.
“Is it you, Lucy?”
“Yes…who’s this?”
“It’s me…you just left me a message.”
“I can’t…hear you. Who’s this?”
“What’s all that noise? Who’s screaming? Where are you?”
“Hold on and I’ll…”
“Lucy…you still there? Lucy!” The noises continue, increase in intensity and then abate. But he can’t make out her voice.
“Aiyeeeeeeee…eeeeeee….ahhhh.” The sounds keep repeating, stretching to extreme lengths and then suddenly cease, beginning again in short bursts from what seem like different voices. It stops again and a male voice can be heard.
“See how good that feels,” says Dr. Primoff, the Picassoesque director of the clinic. “Look at yourself in the mirror…look. You’re more alive now. Your faces, legs, chests, buttocks… I can see the energy seeping from your pores…you’ve expunged all the poison from…”
“Lucy, where are you…what are you doing?”
“…hug each other now…that’s it…that’s it. Now…”
“Lucy, you okay?”
“…eeeeeeahhhhheeee…no, no…stay away from me, please!”
“Lucy, Lucy!”
“Everybody relax. Back away from her…let her breathe…give her some space so she can…”
“Lucy, is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me. Who’s this? Oh, oh…are you still there. I wanna talk to you. I’m at the clinic and…” The bursts of screaming cease. A short stretch of silence is succeeded by a muffled then robust round of applause and then supple spurts of tender oohs and aahs.
“What clinic?”
“Dr. Primoff’s. I’ve been here for several sessions and feel…amazing! I can see so much…feel so many new emotions. My body is so full of energy. Your friend Krassly introduced…I saw him last night. He’s helping me. Can we meet later?”

He sits in a corner of the Bistro patio still fagged from a late-morning surf but the fatigue seems to be lifting and he’s beginning to feel stronger than ever. Pushing his body has done wonders for his muscle tone and stamina, and he’s even begun to eat healthier and cut down on substances. The usual low clouds have evaporated especially early and the high sun slanting down from the east seems to burnish and brighten the faces of the strolling tourists, skaters, and nature worshippers. It’s like they’re being singled out, exposed through a filter that removes all particles of bacteria and smog from the atmosphere, purifying his direct line of vision to them.
“Well, look who slunk in!” spouts the waitress. “I figured you had eloped to some romantic getaway by now. The usual?”
“Orange juice for me and…no, I haven’t…”
“…if you’re drinking orange juice I guess you’re not trying to drown your sorrows so…things must be going well with the…”
“…not…really. I haven’t talked to her for a few weeks. Tryin’ to get my body back in shape so I haven’t sauced it up for a while. Working on a better outlook.”
“So it’s off?”
“Not sure it was ever on but…it was magic for a short while. She took my advice about contacting Krassly and he sent her to Dr. Primoff’s clinic and she…”
“…I know some people who’ve been there. They came through it with new personalities…though not sure they were better ones.”
“Well, she called me from one of her sessions there and it seemed pretty wild. I was looking forward to seeing how her personality might’ve changed but…we set up a time to meet after that and she…”
“…didn’t show!”
“How’d you…you seem to know.”
“I’ve been an off-the-cuff beach therapist for a long time. But you’ll see her again. A few weeks aren’t much time. If she took Krassly’s goodies she’s probably…fermenting somewhere. I got some from him last week through a friend. Notice anything different?”
“Somebody call the police…she’s indecent!” screams a sixtyish woman as she springs up from her chair at a table on the west side of the boardwalk that’s piled with Bibles. “What’s this world coming to?” She continues to rant a variation on her themes and a crowd begins to form around her, but they pay virtually no attention to the female she’s referring to. The crowd grows larger as three security officers trot down Dudley and confront her. She seems overly excited and begins to stutter, unable to utter clear syllables. As she continues to try she loses control of her body as if she’s having a seizure. The furrows in her face become lubricated with tears and she starts to drool while frantically pointing at the female. Seemingly ripe for a straightjacket, the officers coax her to a chair while calling the paramedics. The crowd continues to grow.
“What’s with that woman?” he asks while rising from his seat and rubbernecking the scene.
“She’s a fixture on the boardwalk…a born again,” says the waitress.
“Must be something happening…look at all the people,” he returns, shuffling out the door to join them, she in tow.
They can’t see the woman who’s cocooned by the crowd so they edge around it on the west side for a possible glimpse, but still no luck.
“Maybe we’ll read about it in the paper,” he says, shrugging off the adventure as he notices the left edge of a body protruding from a tree ten feet or so toward the water. The person, whose back is flush against the tree, begins to speak to a male a few feet away and he realizes it’s a woman. Though he didn’t hear the short interchange clearly, it must not have been very welcoming since the male moves on. As another male approaches her, he shuffles around the tree for a glimpse of the mystery woman and sees that she’s reading a book, Ulysses, the only inanimate object attached to her person. Her taut skin is perfectly tanned, the reflection of the sun giving it a golden hue. She has yellowish-blonde curls that cascade onto her shoulders and pastel blue eyes that catch the light as she ever-so-slightly shifts position when turning a page. Her long legs are upright, framing the book, and partially covering her large, firm breasts from his angle. She’s totally relaxed and absorbed in the reading, evidenced by her self-satisfied smile. He moves in front of her, seeing her now fully exposed and familiar as the officers appear, stopping ten feet away to ogle. A few more males drift by amid the exploding cacophony of demands from hysterical voices for her to be arrested.
“Lucy…Lucy, what are you doing? Where’ve you been?”
“Oh, hi! I…that’s not…my name. I’m Penelope.”

One year later. He drifts to shore on his surfboard, comes to a brief rest and springs up, gazing at the gallery of sunbathers before dashing off fifty push-ups. Invigorated, he rushes up and over the mound of sand to discover a phalanx of shaved heads sitting in the lotus position. They’re all wearing gold, loose-fitting unis, and there appears to be no basis for discriminating between male and female. None of its members appear to notice him as he trudges through the sand toward the boardwalk, veering around the left side of the group; they stare straight ahead as if they’re in a trance. Then a figure near the rear flinches from formation but quickly jerks back into focus. He stops and gives the person a long look, hoping to re-stir some interest, and steps closer. It seems like a woman but he can’t be sure. He steps yet closer and she, or he, turns sharply toward him like when a person tries to catch someone staring at them. But this is a look of supplication, of the desire to say something meaningful. Convinced now it’s a woman, he notices the pastel blue eyes in her lingering look. She’s heavier and without hair but there’s no doubt that it’s her. The loose-fitting clothes that hardly do her justice can’t hide her bulging stomach.
“Lucy, or…Penelope…what are you…doing? I haven’t seen you for a long time. How have you been?”
She looks slowly away from him and nods toward the bulge with a radiant smile.
“My name’s Hester now and…I’ve got a new family!”

The post Alchemy appeared first on "Amass Magazine".

John O’Kane

“How’d you hear about us, Mr. Bretoff?” asks the sixtyish, silver-haired woman at the table.

“I…don’t remember exactly. I think it was…”

“Mr. Bretoff…Mr. Bretoff…you okay?”

“I…sure…I was just thinking about…something.” His tentative tone frames his dilating eyes.

“How’d you hear about us?”

“From my…this woman over at the café on…she said she had this old boyfriend whose brother was here and…” He stops and gawks off to the right where two males are painting the walls and returns with a mottled grin.

“Good…we love to get referrals from satisfied customers.”

“And I…think my ex might…be here…or was here when…” He gazes off to his left and lasers the movements of a woman racing down the hallway in her wheelchair, mumbling something to herself.

“What’s her name?”

“Well, she used to go by…but she changed that when she went to…guess that was another friend who went into the convent and then…”

“Maybe you’ll recognize her tomorrow when you come back. You can eat with us. Would you like that?”

“I’m…not sure if…I can but…if I can I would like…”

“Mr. Bretoff, you okay? Do you wanna lay down for a while? Can I get you a water?”

“No…no, no I think I need to leave.”

“Something bothering you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Nothing that I…this place makes me feel like I’ve been here before and something bad happened.”

“Here? We’ve only been here for a short while. I don’t remember ever seeing you here. Are you sure you have the right place?”

“Oh…I don’t know…I just feel…who was here before?”

“I don’t know for sure…think it was a café some years ago, then a mission.”

“Oh…really? I kinda re…member going to some places like that but then I’m not too sure…so…”

“…you’re probably confusing this place with somewhere else.”

“When I was a young…I think I used to come somewhere around here. Maybe the building that used to be here was…”

“Was what, Mr. Bretoff?”

“Maybe it was a café back…”

“Back when?”

“I can’t remember for sure. I think it was when…”

“When, Mr. Bretoff?”

“When that guy was President who…”

“Who was that?”

“I….don’t know. Who was that…lady in the wheelchair?”

“That someone you remember from when we had this President?”

“I don’t…she looks like someone who used to be at that club over on…the Rig or something and…but maybe that was somebody…else.”

“Well, we’d love to have you be part of our family if it’s the right place for you and if you…qualify. Can I get some information from you, Mr. Bretoff?”

“What do…you mean?”

“We wanna make sure you will feel at home here.”

“At home?”

“We wanna make you feel like you’re part of our community and will stay until…well, we don’t wanna see you unhappy.”

“Oh…okay.”

“How do you feel about other people, Mr. Bretoff? Are there any people you don’t like being around?”

“Well…those people who’re always making all that noise up by the Center who…but I think I like just about everyone else.”

“What about girls…I mean women?”

“I like…to sit on the bench by the pagoda and peek at them as they go down to the water.”

“Sure, that’s only natural. But do you enjoy being around them and…interacting with them?”

“Inter…yeah, yeah…I like to…I ran into Sophie last month at the Center and we had a nice chat about…”

“About what?”

“About some of the good times we had when we…”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll find some good companionship here too, and maybe even renew some old acquaintances.”

“I think I would…like that.”

“Do you like to share with people and participate in activities, Mr. Bretoff?”

“I like to help other people and…”

“And what?”

“And…I like to get back something when I deserve it.”

“That’s…pretty normal. And do you like to join activities with people you don’t know very well?”

“As long as….I like to do new things with some but…”

“But what?”

“But…not with…”

“Well, you think about that and we’ll revisit it. What’s your financial situation like?”

“I have a bank account at the…coop over on…”

“Sure…the coop. Do you have documentation of your net worth?”

“Net…worth?”

“Yes, like your recent tax returns?”

“I think I have that…it’s over at…”

“Try to find that information and bring it to us as soon as you can. We don’t accept applicants who are independently wealthy. We have a cap on income level and asset ownership. All of your needs will be taken care of here so you’ll have no worries. You’ll be relieved of the burden of having to manage your finances. You’ll be free to pursue your dreams and goals…the values of an alternative lifestyle to perfection.”

“I value…”

The building is one of the first constructed along the Boardwalk, built in the first few years of the 20th century as a hotel but since adapted to the sundry uses of various owners and occupiers. Abandoned quite recently and threatened with demolition, a consortium of concerned citizens purchased it and leased it to a group of artists, therapists and pharmacologists. The consensus was to preserve and upgrade the fossil of the older structure while adding a modern front with lots of windows for light and a view of the ocean. Workers are currently putting the finishing touches on this façade. Just to the right of the entrance is a large, discolored wooden arch hewn with indentations and markings positioned in a small garden of succulents. Several folks are currently milling around it.

“What do you think this is?” asks a woman with a long gray ponytail, admiring the arch like it’s an important work of art on display at the LA Louver.

“Oh, maybe it’s…your guess is as good as mine,” returns a portly male with a cane who’s squinting like he’s trying to bring the image into clearer focus.

“Who knows,” blurts a genderless voice from the fringe. “But where did they get it and…why did they put it here?”

A woman with a frizzed-out reddish-gray Afro sashays through the tangle to the arch, disrupting the momentary stupor. She looks it over, takes a deep breath and walks circumspectly through it, turning around slowly to face the leering crowd before strutting back. “It makes me feel…like I’ve been on a trip into…the future and back,” she says, giggling to the gallery.

“Or…into the past and…returning to…” The portly male mouths a few latent syllables.

“Returning to what?” asks another gray ponytail with granny glasses as she creeps up behind him and massages his mid-section. He stumbles into the woman next to him, who’s tall and very thin, her baggy clothes obscuring what was likely a model’s body. He manages a vacant smirk.

“To bed!” rips an anonymous voice. “I need a nap.” A concordance of chuckles suffuses the crowd as it disperses toward the front door of the building and files inside.

The giddy mood presses into the lobby, sparking surprised looks from those schmoozing at a few tables. The entrants spread around and begin to mingle, the mood now modulating. A few languish alone on the sofas and gawk at the spectacle. A florid, loquacious cue-tip jerks up from a table and waddles to a sofa, bending over directly in front of a man who’s staring at a space off to the right. She turns and sees the apparent object of his vision, a rusty-haired sixtyish woman busting out of a string bikini.

“Do you know her?” she asks, unable to break his trance. “That’s Lisa…she used to be a stripper over at the…somewhere on…Washington I think. She still likes to show off her silicone. Are you the new arrival? I’m Clara.”

“New arrival?” He now turns to face her.

“You just got here?”

“Yeah, that’s…right. I just got here…a while ago. I’m…Andre. Andre. I…”

“Yes…you what?” He jerks his attention toward the string bikini and lasers her, though she doesn’t return it. He shuffles away and alights on another sofa across the room, crosses his legs and gazes at the wall.

“Charming the new male residents again, Clara!” exhorts a lanky woman wearing a slightly-oversized tie-dyed tee who’s been tracking the trajectories. She rises and saunters over to the sofa, sporting a quizzical smile. Clara remains on the periphery, bemused.

“I’m Jane,” offers the tie-dyed tee, edging her body onto the sofa. She has an unflinching smile that exudes life-and-people-are-beautiful but giggles periodically and at the very edge of each eruption her expression becomes vacant, like a subliminal flash threatens to dissolve her upbeat mood, before returning to form.

“You must be our new member,” she continues, “the one everybody’s been talkin’ about.” He’s in the process of forming a syllable when Lisa plops down on the other side of the sofa, quashing his verbal efforts but re-engaging his gaze. He appears deep in thought.

“Not much to talk about because…”

“Why, Andre?” asks Jane, drawing his gaze halfway toward her.

“I haven’t talked to anybody about much…yet and…”

“And?” He now turns toward her while riveted on Lisa who’s seemingly oblivious to their conversation.

“And I haven’t had a…chance.”

“Maybe your reputation precedes you. Have you lived around here?”

“Yeah, I used to live down…”

“Down?”

“Down…somewhere around the…guess maybe that was a long…time ago.”

“How long?” Before Jane can finish he jerks up and arcs to about five feet in front of Lisa and stops quickly, like he’s decided not to address her. He observes her intently for several seconds until she slowly makes eye contact, but gracefully angles away toward Jane who turns and looks at her quizzically. Locking on her gape like he’s come under a spell, he inclines his head lower and fixes on her necklace.

Curious, Jane rises and joins Andre’s sightline. “Hey, what’s so fascinating about Lisa’s neck?” Lisa looks at Jane, as if to second the question, and then directly at Andre who squints and resumes his inspection, now below the necklace in a swatch of crepey freckles that points like an arrow to the deep valley cleaving her fleshy masses. Lisa reaches behind her back and undoes the strap of her bikini top. It slips down slightly while pulsing her countenance, her eyes like flames combusting from a smoldering fire.

“Lisa, what’s got into you?” interjects Jane.

Andre meanwhile inspects the new terrain, his penetrating gaze seeming to firm up her skin which now reveals a shapely mole.

Jane steps to the right of Lisa and stretches onto the sofa, reaching behind to fasten her strap. Andre’s gaze remains fixed on the same spot like he’s mesmerized by the afterimage of a flashing neon sign.

An electronic, genderless voice reverberates from the ceiling.

“Attention everyone…attention! We’re gathering in the auditorium for our five minutes of peace and love at the top of the hour. Please don’t be late!”

As if the sound secretes an invisible chemical through the room, everyone’s movements slow, their expressions becoming pensive but expectant. They fall into single file and march methodically through the door. Andre scans the ephemera pulsing from the wall….

The room is spacious and brightly lit, the walls patterned with random paintings, posters and portraits. The chairs are full of residents whose attention is focused on the screen in front where images begin to flicker in tandem with soft, instrumental music as the lights dim. Faint lyrics surface and gradually become more distinct. They’re from an arrangement of “White Bird” that transitions into an eclectic mash-up. A field of daisies fills the pulsing screen, the camera zooming in to glimpse what appear to be clusters of bodies contorting through the petals, then back out. This repeats but each time the camera offers a slightly different vantage of the bodies. The lyrics of “White Bird” press through the sounds as naked limbs entwine the flowers, fading to a spike of instrumental riffs that are quickly layered with the electronic voice, this time inflected an octave higher.

“Now hug each other…move around the room and spread love to your brothers and sisters!”

The riffs keep repeating as some pivot eagerly to a mostly willing target while others inch timidly toward moving shapes and flail for hugs. Many find vacant spaces but continue the search. Meanwhile the body parts on the screen evolve into Frisbees floating off in various directions, each transforming into one then another human shape before returning to inanimate plastic disk. It conjures a hiccupping organism.

A scream cascades through the room and the lights flash on and off.

“Attention everyone…attention!” peals the electronic voice with a trace of urgency. “Please be careful…respect your neighbor!”

The interruption snuffs the scream, leaving a stretch of silence that seems to alter the cadence of the flashing lights. Snickers and then a few giggles puncture the void as the lights stabilize, though remain slightly brighter than before. Most now seem to see others around them more clearly and the configuration of exploratory hugging changes. The riffs return as the Frisbees on the screen morph into peace signs, the countenances registering degrees of blissful resignation.

“That’s it…that’s it!” peals the voice. “But move around, spread your love…reach out and touch someone!”

The scene resembles a Chinese fire drill, the urgency dissipating with each movement. Some touch while others graze toward their nominal target but not quite reaching it and slumber off toward another choice. The riffs slow and distort then abruptly terminate as the lights fully brighten and the voice fills the room.

“Time’s up….time’s up! Return to your rooms and savor the good feelings you’ve received today and…rest up for our activities later. There’ll be a poetry reading in the library…a group therapy session in the conference room…a seminar on libido retrieval here…an anger management class in…”

“…ehhhhhhhh…haaaahhhhh…no, no!” screams a tall, wispy but spry cue-tip in the rear with long, stringy hair swaying from her efforts to get away from a frenzy of groping hands in search of targets. All eyes turn toward the action as the woman evades the flailing reach and slips to the door.

“I told you last week I don’t remember ever meeting you,” she says, inching through the doorway. The male pursuer continues searching as if he’s comfortable flailing at her physical echoes, slow in processing her words, or perhaps just hard of hearing.

“What do you mean?” asks the handsome, burly hulk with a sagging paunch whose instinctual energies seem to be in the process of dissembling. He turns sharply around, the cue-tip now nearly through the doorway. “You said the other day you wanted to be…”

“…be what? You got the wrong person…I’ve never talked to you.”

Several genderless figures wearing white coats rush through the doorway. One grabs the male’s arms and takes him from the room. He goes willingly but with a puzzled expression on his face. The other white coats meander through the skittish crowd. As if the first scream might’ve been contagious, another one erupts from the other side of the room and the white coats skip to the source, but another spikes from an unknown location before the first stops, the overlay delivering a sonorous screech. A small crowd gathers near the center of the room and the white coats surround them.

“Don’t touch me!….get away from me!” screams a woman who’s gyrating in the center of a crowd, her short, brownish-orange hair seeming to frizz out in rhythm with her movements. She swivels a choppy, incomplete three-sixty, gazing at the rapt expressions and suddenly stops, as if on stage, and delivers an apologetic curtsy. As she faces the group again her matronly mien dissolves and her countenance pulses with confidence.

“Why are all of you looking at…me…like that?” she asks while stepping to the edge of the crowd, forging a path through the awestruck bodies to the awaiting clasps of white coats on the other side. As they escort her from the room a male jettisons from the group and impales himself against the wall, arms spread out parallel to the floor, his look suggesting he’s occupied with his own mental imagery, oblivious to the gallery’s stares.

“Relax everyone…relax. Please return to your rooms!”

Most trudge anxiously through the door while a few stragglers ogle the male who remains frozen in the same position against the wall as the white coats bee-line their way to him.

Andre is wedged into the corner of the room in squat formation like he’s ready to spring up at any moment, gazing across at Lisa who’s returning it from a few feet away as she’s slowly angling to the exit. They become locked in addled trances, freezing Lisa’s momentum and straining Andre’s expression. As if this brief meeting of minds secretes some chemical that awakens his memory this strain now dissipates, and he feels elated, energized with confidence and clarity.

“Lisa…Lisa!” he exhorts, springing in her direction. “It was in that spacious upper-level living room at that mansion on the Boardwalk, just down from the Lafayette.” He’s now facing her. She seems ready to make her escape but then becomes curious. “Remember?” Her expression contorts. “The windows were all open. There was lots of natural light streaming in. Sensual music filtered in from ceiling speakers. It was late afternoon, the 4th of July 1979.” She seems pleasantly puzzled, her eyes flickering recognition. “The beautiful screams from so many throats, the odor of sweat and pungent lilacs.”

Lisa curls her lips ever so slightly and flashes a caustic smile while slowly stepping away from him. She suddenly turns around, fixes on him for several seconds, and screams through a convolution of high-pitch variances. Two white coats appear and graciously guide her away from him, terror in her eyes. But she keeps looking at him all the way through the exit. Andre rushes after her.

“What are you doing on Saturday night?”

The post Altz House appeared first on "Amass Magazine".

John O’Kane

Long Beach is losing one of its great artists to gentrification. Peytch has occupied his studio for 29 years on 14th Street just east of the 710 FWY. He’s worked in several genres since getting his aesthetic inspiration growing up in Germany but settled on mobile sculptures when he moved into the space on 14th. Now these art forms are not exactly what you might think. They’re not those kinetic objects with hanging rods that play with the principle of equilibrium, what you might find on a pass through the galleries on the monthly art walks in downtown Long Beach. His space is filled with a wide array of exquisitely sculpted mobiles that are in various states of arrested development. Some were mobile en-route to his studio, others were towed in.

Peytch’s life-long love is with vintage Mercedes cars, treating them like works of art. He’s worked on many over the years but prefers those made from the 1970s through the mid-to-late 1980s since they’re more durable and less electronically complicated. This is also a stretch that nurtured his formative years and which most nostalgia-driven consumers of pre-owned German quality are driven to. The streets of Long Beach are filled with these marvels, their owners members of a virtual subculture who acknowledge each other with nods, waves and honks. Most find their way to Peytch’s place.

Its suite of workspaces truly conjures an artist’s studio, one where the creator lives with his work, thoroughly cohabits with his materials, the stacks, clusters, mounds, and layers of substances that will be processed into product. It’s no state-of-the art ultra-efficient techno-repair palace where the proprietors adhere to a set schedule and everything is in its place, catalogued and measured and slotted like in some military installation.

Artists simply don’t thrive in this kind of environment. Peytch is surely an efficient worker but passion playfully delivers his results in a space that’s raw and random. The mass of parts—generators, hoses, wheels, wrenches, lug-bolts, brake pads, motor mounts, etc.—can be left exposed in their everyday clutter, easily retrievable at a moment’s notice according to his “method,” the ability to scan the inventory quickly and recognize the item he needs (not unlike the power to pick out relevant words on a page thoughtfully read). You get the feeling he eats this kind of challenge up.

If he should not find what he needs the creative instinct really kicks in. He scours the area for parts that are close enough to warrant some customizing, using whatever materials he can to collage the vehicle back to health. The great tradition of German engineering that gave us these marvels demands that parts be precisely measured, otherwise the whole system might be damaged. Trimming a hose to fit might keep the machine running smooth for a good while but it will likely need to be replaced well before its time and even possibly affect the functioning of another part in due course. But Peytch has mastered the nuances of size and shape. One day he needed to replace a fuel filter on a 1983 Diesel but he didn’t have this particular one so he scrounged around and found one from a 1984 to make the appropriate modifications.

He prides himself on the ability to get the vehicle in good enough shape that it will not need servicing for quite some time. He’s apparently not satisfied unless he can repair the vehicle so well that its current condition is improved and even approaches the quality of its origins.

It’s the artist’s temperament to never accept the existent!

And this means to always improvise. On another day he found a small part he needed that had languished in a nearby stash, but the encrustations from its years of obscurity had to be removed so he rummaged through the trash and found a plastic container, pulled out his pocket knife and sculpted the perfect receptacle for marinating the part in baking soda.

Peytch’s creative atmosphere encourages multitasking, the time for diversions and interruptions, impromptu chats with clients and visitors who drop in, especially those with emergencies, and time to explain to a customer why the work was done. We can all relate to being brushed-off by our doctor or a repair person with phrases that betray the anxiety of having to spend precious time making you feel assured about what the problem really was that you brought to them, urging you through the exit with the consolation that they’re the expert and not to worry!

Peytch the expert is the Tony Romo of car repair. He overcompensates for all the pundits that refuse to explain why it took four hours to get your car to stop stuttering, or why a routine maintenance check-up led to your need to apply for a loan at the local credit union. Time’s not an issue. Take a seat and let him orate about why your transmission is slipping, graphically explain how the configuration of bands works or doesn’t work in that mystery box, what likely caused the dysfunction, stressing the need to frequently monitor the fluid level. Or why you need a valve adjustment to extend the life of the car, what a valve is, where it’s located, what function it provides in the car’s combustion system. You come away wondering if Peytch perhaps got a masters degree in combustion technology at the Free University of Berlin. He pelters you with enough information that you’re tempted to take notes and enter the DIY world, even scrounge around for your dog-eared owner’s manual at Planet of Books on Anaheim.

If you’re not currently in need of repairs, Peytch will likely not mind if you peruse his gallery, the part of his studio for the aesthetically-inclined. Now this is not a space in back or peripheral to the action, a kind of sidelight that Peytch offers to his fans as cultural compensation for waiting out the repair time, stocked with cheese and crackers and rotgut wine. It’s sort of hiding in plain sight. Some regulars see it right away but if you’re a novice and aren’t especially art-minded you can possibly access it when the light changes and you squint, suddenly seeing objects thrown into relief like you’ve slipped through a wormhole into another dimension.

These objects are the truly vintage variety of Mercedes from even further back in time than usual, exquisite immobile sculptures gracefully occupying space. They need attention, often major service, but for the moment they lie only in potential readiness to be worked on. In fact, the owners are likely in no great hurry to get their vessel running for fear of lessening its life span. They’re probably pondered its fate for a long while, relishing its sheer beauty. Hence the expired plates from some time in the Bush administration.

Some customers climb inside the cars to admire the artistry, and even frantically make offers, but Peytch quickly shoos them away, making sure no dinks or smudges spoil the canvases…

My 1981 Mercedes diesel developed a serious sputter during the week and a friend of a friend highly recommended Peytch. I called him on Friday and relayed the symptoms. He said it was likely a fuel line problem and graciously agreed to fix the problem the next morning while I waited.

I’m waiting outside his studio with his two loyal employees, Israel and Poncho, when a black Mercedes sedan turns the corner at Oregon and 14th, coming straight toward us. As it approaches I notice that it appears to be similar to my car. The driver parks in tandem to mine and two identical structures face off. He proceeds to inspect mine like he’s sizing it up for potential purchase and finally smiles before slipping the vehicle into a lane, telling me that it shouldn’t take more than a few hours. I decide to explore the area, perhaps find a café or coffee spot and catch up on the day’s news. He says he’ll call me with a heads up.

Peytch’s place is in a kind of strip mall of wholesale businesses with recently standardized facades, and I quickly discover that the entire area is a variation on this pattern, elaborated with warehouses and home-conversions. The only island of commerce within reasonable walking distance is Dino’s Burgers on Anaheim. Its scatter of customers are either waking to the day with monster coffees or finishing off the previous night’s dealings with ballast. The Dinosaur burger appears to be the substance of choice. I get the breakfast special and a small Dinosaur burger on the side.

Getting the call after a pleasant few hours of chats and doses of headline news, I meander back to a buzz of activity outside Peytch’s place. Several of his loyal customers in waiting are schmoozing it up but a few are animated about the arrival of the landlord, or his representative, who apparently came by to complain about the number of cars parked around the area. This is a common occurrence according to Peytch and the very issue that led to his need to move. His original lease, from 1991, specified that only seven cars could be parked within the confines of his allotted rental space. As his business grew this limitation could not realistically be enforced, but it wasn’t until recently when a new owner bought the strip of property. Peytch believes this has more to do with the changing nature of the adjacent businesses whose owners mostly cater to an upscale clientele and don’t want his kind of action to taint it.

Anyway, Long Beach’s loss is Bellflower’s gain. Peytch’s mobile sculptures are now housed in his new studio at 10506 Trabuco Street.

The post Peytch’s Place appeared first on "Amass Magazine".

John O’Kane

The only media fixation that’s more irritating than the saturation coverage of candidates running for an office nearly two years ahead of the election instead of discussing issues, is the punditry of phrase-pinning, the constant refrain that certain candidates are “socialist” and therefore untouchables.
George Stephanopoulos recently destroyed what burgeoning relevance had surfaced about this discredited ism with one of his patented interruptions. The issue at hand was whether the Democrats would have to field a candidate more mainstream in order to beat Trump. He blurted that the problem the “left” is having is that 75% of independents are uncomfortable with socialism and especially a socialist candidate. The air cleared, the “powerhouse roundtable” could turn to Joe Biden’s troubles (This Week, 4/7/19).
Polling-artifice can deliver a wealth of surprises. Many Americans react to the mere mention of “socialism” like it might leave a toxic stain on their being, so when questions are crafted to force a limited choice about it the results can be quite predictable. Those same independents supported Bernie Sanders and he has called himself a socialist from the start. With such an example we should be witnessing an epidemic of copycats.
But perhaps Bernie was immune because his transparency and passion trumped a claim that most didn’t really believe anyway.
Much of the mainstream media has been claiming for some time that the Democratic Party is moving to the “far left” and this labeling is often interchangeable with “socialist.” Jonathan Karl, piling on this sentiment, said that the 2020 election “will be a referendum on socialism” (This Week, 4/14/19). Hence this media’s obsession with the new firebrands in Congress, particularly Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They’re certainly not your weekend liberals who spend most of their time fundraising or hanging around K Street. They challenge the bipartisan do-nothing consensus and as a result seem so far removed from biz-as-usual that they’re destined for overkill coverage. They deserve attention, but this media has little interest in putting their resurgence in perspective. Since they’re so different than the standard Democrats in tone and style—forget substance for a moment—short-cut labeling works just fine.
The perfect formula for creating external threats: Demonize the few to alienate and sway the many, the gullible public; convince them these upstarts are really only the aggressive tip of the iceberg, that the whole party is becoming outside the mainstream, thus mimicking the Republicans’ persistent refrain.
The bulk of Democrats are still fixated on the Russians stealing the election and engaging in all sorts of nefarious actions against us; forming a bloc to challenge the Green New Deal proposed by a few; protecting incumbents in the upcoming election cycle; supporting Trump’s military excesses in the face of continued austerity, etc.
They’re even taking swipes at their more popular colleagues, dissolving the facade of unity, according to Aida Chavez (The Intercept, 4/12/19).
The public appears to be in sync here. According to a recent survey by the Hidden Tribes Project, the views of the Democrats who post on social media tend to be liberal and progressive but they are outnumbered two to one by those who don’t post and tend to be more moderate and conservative (“Liberals on Twitter Don’t Speak for Quiet Majority,” New York Times, 4/10/19).
A few more Congressional Democrats are admittedly starting to support Medicare for All, but how telling it was when Nancy Pelosi went on record recently assuring the private insurance industry their fears of this passing were unwarranted. How was she re-elected if the party is moving to the left?
Sticking with healthcare, can the call for Medicare for All be deemed that radical anyway when it is essentially the healthcare system in place for virtually every advanced industrial country, none of which are “socialist?” The northern European countries, especially Scandinavia, are often labeled socialist by those who conflate them with authoritarian, one-party controlled states which barely exist, but they’re multi-party, democratic states. The first attempt to get Medicare for All occurred in the mid-1960s, the current Medicare program in place for Seniors the compromise from that failure. The Democratic Party was hardly staffed with radicals in those days, though LBJ’s Great Society consensus included a different breed of liberal.
The Great Society liberal programs were essentially a retooling of the New Deal. It’s no accident that one of the biggest offerings from the new breed in Congress is the Green New Deal, a remaking of priorities through a massive public-private partnering modeled on the public works projects of the 1930s to invest in green, renewable energy, and a host of other related shifts designed to create quality jobs and bring more of the excluded into the system.
The goal of FDR’s programs was to stabilize capitalism not scrap it and start over with a socialist boilerplate. Getting the unemployed on the payroll was of course a major incentive but those programs were not meant to last and they were compromises, not meant to replace the private sector. This mentality was reflected in Social Security, a pension system devised by the Rockefellers and FDR’s class to ward off the system’s complete collapse. It was meant as a kind of stopgap, a last resort to supplement the hoped for growth of private plans beyond the Depression.
If the New Deal stabilized capitalism, the Great Society, proffered during a quite prosperous time, attempted to make it more secure by completing and deepening the innovations of the 1930s. The Democrats had the power of the postwar consensus on their side, the partnering of labor, management and government to build the middle class, and they controlled Congress during much of this stretch. Tax policy was a significant tool for advancing the middle class and including more of the excluded. The bracket for the highest earners was 70% (down from 91% during the Ike years), and this revenue stream fed the programs that could make this happen.
Proposals by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren to tax the rich at a higher rate are essentially a throwback to those years when capitalism offered protections to the lower and middle classes, and are in sync with what Bernie Sanders has pushed for years. They are certainly not “socialist.”
In this climate of labeling and political correctness there can be no clarity on what socialism is and how it differs from social democracy or some other emerging social formation, impeding progress toward new ways of thinking through our polarized state. The demonizing of positions deemed to be liberal or radical is nothing new, but this time around it’s clear that it’s being done to discredit policies and ideas that huge numbers of Americans want, or might want. Label them “socialist” and they’ll have second thoughts.
In his recent column Paul Krugman claims that neither the Green New Deal nor Medicare for All are “socialist in the traditional sense” (New York Times, 4/12/19).
Those in the media who see socialism breaking out everywhere hardly read Krugman but we have to wonder what a non-traditional socialism might look like. Perhaps it should be re-labeled. But first we should become firmly anti-anti-socialist and reconsider the relationship between capitalism, the public sector and labor.
The existing system has in effect been a species of un-labeled socialism for a select group of corporate brokers who pander market fundamentalism while usurping the public sector for some time. This partnership works toward the dissolution of democratic freedoms and the voiding of checks and balances in a virtual one-party state. Whatever the smattering of sympathies finally is among those on the left, they’re certainly for more democratic freedoms that can lead to checking the power excesses of the current corporate-socialist authorities, and above all bringing labor back into the partnership.
We’ve shifted so far to the right over the past several years that moves or even suggestions to revive an earlier status quo seem “far left” to many, but the new constituency for Sanders and the progressive faces in Congress see the political spectrum differently. It’s propelled mostly by millennials and post-millennials who’ve been exposed to new social models and witnessed the failure of the existing partnership, some the direct victims of the 2008 crash. These models themselves were responses to the failure of traditional socialism, its top-down centralization of power and economies of scale especially, that mandated anti-democratic methods. Bred on the wave of Zapatista-inspired anti-globalization movements and their flare-ups in the more recent Occupy movement, which drew attention to inequality through the coining of the 1%, they distrust large state-driven structures and parties supported by special interests. Strongly influenced by anarchism, they believe in seeding the scattered and repressed localities with the tools to participate in their own destiny; giving them access to a social contract permitting their perpetual input.
The big ideas of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal require a considerable degree of centralized control and this perhaps explains the reluctance to quickly embrace them even by some liberals. But Medicare is devoid of special interests and eliminates the overhead that can expropriate value, while the Green New Deal bonds previously excluded interests and communities with a redirected alliance of government and business.
But we’re in uncharted territory and the value of anti-anti-socialism is remaining open to what can happen through crafting one success at a time, using each to spawn a narrative series that will eventually redefine a replacement for “socialism.”

Reprinted from CounterPunch, April 26, 2019.

The post Demonizing the Few to Alienate and Sway the Many appeared first on "Amass Magazine".

John O’Kane

The left professes diversity as its vehicle and goal to expand power and bring more of the deserving into the system but, ironically, it’s one of the reasons why the Democrats fared so poorly in the 2016 election. Some, like Jay Haug, blame their intolerance. They force their issues of race, gender, and sexuality in the faces of their opponents with a politically correct inevitability that backfires (American Thinker, 1/20/17). Similarly, J. T. Young claims their diverse pitch is undercut by their homogenizing of substance and badgering methods (The Daily Caller, 11/30/17).
Could they have diversified and softened their pitch to those outside their orbit?
It’s difficult to imagine how believers in traditional marriage, for example, could have engaged in a productive conversation with the LGBT community. The left needed a more flexible frame to approach these outsiders—especially moderate, working class, and rural whites—and set aside their differences at least long enough to win elections, something the right has been very good at for some time now.
These differences were no minor obstacle. The success of the Sanders campaign challenged the Democratic Party’s established position on who should be included in its coalition. The Democrats have left the lower and working classes behind over the past forty-plus years as they’ve shifted to the right. In the mid-to-late 1970s the Democrats began to embrace identity politics, the special endorsement of racial, ethnic and gendered groups believed to be deprived and deserving of special treatment. As Robert Benn Michaels shows, the energy spent in protecting and elevating these groups consumed the field, leaving the class narrative to lie fallow (“Introduction” to The Trouble with Diversity, 2006). Their love affair with diversity erupted from this shift, replacing the mandate to expunge racism from society that had motored the civil rights movement into the 1970s and the solid support for equality that had been a mainstay of its platform. Though never completely losing the initiative to fight racism and inequality, the focus was on celebrating the differences that people of color brought to the social mix and finding ways to include them more successfully. The working class was and is not all white, of course, but the effect of this shift has been the exclusion of significant numbers of whites, particularly the lower classes. The Democrats and, more broadly, the left, have acted and legislated according to the belief that this approach was a necessary corrective since “white” is synonymous with “privileged.”
The 1977 Bakke case, where a white medical school applicant was successful in claiming reverse discrimination against the affirmative action process, was the beginning of a challenge to the easy conflation of white and privileged. Ronald Reagan’s election a few years later captured many of these disaffected whites for the Republican Party where they’ve mostly remained. The 2008 economic collapse should have returned them in droves to the Democrats, and would have to some version of the older party.
The priority given by the new Democratic Party to demographic inclusion over economic justice helps explain this failure and why so many people of color, especially Blacks, rejected Sanders. But more pointedly, according to Briahna Gray, they believed that since he is white his policies would exclude them—a misperception since these policies were more progressive than Clinton’s and geared to reduce inequality across the board and help keep the disaffected working class males from supporting Trump (The Intercept, “Fetishizing ‘Identity Politics’ Could Cost Democrats,” 6/18/18).
Those left of the liberals and the fringe to their left, relatively small in terms of numbers but not inconsequential, fought to include moderate, working class, and rural whites in the coalition because of their belief that economic justice issues should trump demographics. Had they had a more influential voice, the right would not so easily have captured this group.
But as it turned out, the reigning bloc of liberals wrote off small-town, de-industrialized, red-purplish-state America with its surfeit of deprived whites—and even sectors of moderate white suburbia—where many were certainly waiting for change. Had they scoured these areas inspired to grasp the economic damage these sectors suffered they could’ve possibly found a way to include these victims, though this would’ve required some quite innovative therapeutic conversion strategies.
They could’ve schmoozed with those privileged whites living in trailer parks on the non-living wages of the flexible, global economy and found ways to bring them into the majority. They could’ve become profilers and identified potential candidates with darker drops of blood and made use of the new testing technologies celebrated in the criminal procedure TV shows to learn if they possessed the requisite one percent or even more, and then worked out how much of a percentage was needed to make it into the coalition.
Once they knew who was in or out they could’ve held a meeting where these candidates, the drop-challenged, were interviewed about their role in slavery, giving them a chance to repent and receive political absolution. Many of the candidates would likely have acknowledged the injustices of slavery but also suggested they follow the money and go after families which accumulated great wealth from these injustices, even offering to authorize a payroll deduction at their credit unions in good faith. Some would surely have asked for help, however, in getting their kids into the better state colleges which had begun to recruit diverse candidates from outside the country to get higher tuition for their budget crises.
The real challenge then would’ve been to get the parties to engage in a conversation, no mean task since the effects of years of segregation have seeded fear and distrust in everyone’s minds. Those astute in conversion therapies might’ve succeeded in producing a consensus that more fairly placed the blame. But therapists would’ve faced an especially formidable challenge in getting those giving priority to racial, demographic justice and those pushing the priority of economic justice to see through the other’s eyes. Drop-challenged high school grads from deficit-ridden rural and inner city public schools would’ve had to mix it up with the drop-wealthy, some educated at elite schools and who might’ve been fairly recent arrivals from challenged countries. Could they have bridged the divide?
The “demographic destiny” of the drop explosion, the priority given to race, then as now, conforms to a certain ethic of equality. The liberal mandate is to mostly include the excluded, provide opportunities through expanded access that will somehow give the recipients a greater share of income and wealth, and spread the correct bodies through the social matrix in the hope that filter-down economics will deliver them from material evil. The flaw here, though, is that they will have to face off with the occupational structure and this means hierarchy and exclusion, no sure guarantee that the new included will find greater equality in a system that dispenses so many low wages.
As Jennifer Delton points out, while post-1970s diversity policies have successfully darkened the working populace in both the public and private sectors, this is mainly evident at the professional levels and, tellingly, as the society has witnessed an increasing gap between top and bottom (Washington Post, “The Left’s Grand Delusion,” 7/28/17).
The economic justice camp conforms to a different ethic. It pushes toward an equality of results, though never fully endorsing this extreme since it conjures a host of taboos for Americans. It means too much action from government and that will lead to welfare and eventually socialism, or even communism, since the individual must be free to achieve on their own. And the leaders are all-too-aware of the occupational barriers that must be confronted, not to mention the political ones. Many of the Great Society programs, for example, have been severely weakened, if not eliminated. So this camp has been ineffective, defaulting to an equality of opportunity approach that is easier to execute—just let the forces of our self-correcting system play out!—and sounds so right.
Perhaps these therapists can temper the drop friction and find a way to move forward. But more likely they’ll have to honestly admit that these notions of equality, ambiguously referenced in the Declaration of Independence, rift the cultural fabric and can’t be successfully united without force, some form of top-down authority that would surely provoke a backlash in the absence of a changed consciousness among the populace, and especially among liberals on the left whose diversity fundamentalism still mostly holds through the 2018 midterms.
While the recent election witnessed the success of progressive Democratic candidates and those of color who prioritized economic justice, the most progressive ones fell short as Ryan Grim claims (The Intercept, “How Midterm Results Will Keep Democratic Infighting Going,” 11/6). The electoral map shows that the Democrats’ biggest gains were in the suburbs (New York Times, 11/6). The Republicans still mostly captured those in economically deprived areas and the working class. According to national exit polls, the working class voted for Trump by 37 points in 2016 and Republican House candidates by 24 points in 2018 (Working Class Perspectives, “Class Prejudice and the Democrats’ Blue Wave,” Jack Metzgar, 11/26/18). This split between demographic diversity and economic justice will continue, according to David Brooks (Meet the Press, 11/11), until either the Republicans attract more people of color, beyond their already substantial following, or the diversity liberals can manufacture a new coalition. Otherwise 2020 won’t be much different than 2018.
The engineering of a vague sense of equality through the inclusion of many who are already privileged and the targeting of others strictly because they fit protected categories will continue to invest the ethic of equalization with contradictions and absurdities and invite further backlash in the absence of a fully inclusive coalition.
Consider the current lawsuit against Harvard by Asian Americans who contend they were denied admission in favor of lesser-qualified applicants (to create a more balanced student body, the school claims, based on life experiences as well as academics). There are simply not enough slots in elite or any other institutions to accommodate the qualified and tinkering with this balance from above and outside can only make our hyper-competitive society even more impossible, our democracy more fragile. The only fair and honest quota system is one that is fully inclusive but also realistically achievable. This will require an overhaul of the wage and occupational structures to absorb the surplus of applicants and compensate for the inevitable glitches and exclusions.
Forced and deficient quota systems invite a reactionary PC. Political correctness is a legitimate response to rigidity, the refusal of the system to change. It targets specific sectors where unsolved issues fester, and the link between race and class is certainly one. But politics is rarely correct. It is riddled with experimental errors forced through by special interests. Political rationality is irrationality masking as progress. It offers mostly sketchy constructs awaiting deconstruction.

Originally published in Counterpunch, December 19, 2018. Thanks to the student input from my Fall writing seminar in the expression of these thoughts.

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